


Chaos Theory

by Ashirene



Category: Love Live! School Idol Project
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crime AU, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Phantom Thief AU, Romance, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-11-02 17:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10948932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashirene/pseuds/Ashirene
Summary: Senior Investigator Ayase Eli has what she'd like to think is a strong sense of justice. With a dignified career and an eye that's sharper than the rest of her peers, she has an uncanny talent for solving every case thrown her way.That is, until she's assigned to investigate a master thief that's taken up residence in Tokyo — a thief whose identity has more secrets than fact and almost as many enemies as she does enigma. Perhaps not surprisingly enough, some of the secrets she hides are far bigger than what they seem... and investigating them may prove to be just as deadly as the people they're about.NozoEli Crime/Phantom Thief AU - NicoMaki side pairing.





	1. The Dark, the Damp, and the Distinguished

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyo fam,
> 
> I'm back from ~~idol hell~~ Tokyo, and even though I'm currently part of the post-Japan Depression Club, I decided to finish off the first chapter of my promised new fic. I hope you guys enjoy this as much as my previous works, and I'm really excited to see what you all think of this. ^^
> 
>  **Main Pairings:** NozoEli, but with a _very_ healthy dose of NicoMaki, and a bit of KotoUmi
> 
> Forget about [Heaven is a Place on Earth](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8674477) \- I'm about to show you a whole new side to them.

The sunlight shifting through the blinds woke her long after the bedside alarm on her nightstand did. After several minutes of groping around with her eyes closed and head still under the covers, she finally slapped the alarm clock into silence.

For a brief, blissful few minutes in the intermediate between sleep and wakefulness, Nozomi considered curling right back up under the comforter and snoozing the afternoon away before she remembered that she had set that particular alarm for a reason.

Tugging on the string that brought the blinds up above the window, she yawned, unwilling to abandon the warm softness of her bed before finally turning her full, undivided attention to the insistent alarm clock—it was past noon.

She was supposed to be trying to change her sleeping schedule, but that was a problem for future her. Who cared if she didn’t fix it today? She’d been trying to change it for the past, oh, five years or so, and she’d been just as successful at it as the day she’d started.

Stumbling off the bed and into the adjacent kitchen of her tiny Tokyo apartment, she waited as she heated a cup of water in the microwave, dusting a bag of instant coffee into it after it had heated. Stirring it absentmindedly with a disposable stir-stick, she opened her omnitool on her wrist in the meantime, lazily browsing through that morning’s news she’d slept through.

She had to admit that the device came in handy and one of these days, she would get around to thanking Umi for developing it.

She had read three-quarters of an article regarding the development of a new web security system by one of Tokyo’s biggest tech devs when her omnitool chimed with the new-message alert—once, twice, then three times before it registered an incoming call.

Nozomi winced slightly. She knew _that_ ringtone anywhere.

Flipping up the display, she opened the call.

The long, dark hair and pale skin of her personal technical engineer filled the small, holographic screen. Today, just like most other days, Sonoda Umi did not look amused.

Putting on her biggest, most winning smile, Nozomi tapped the “talk” icon in the corner of the screen. “Umi-chan,” she greeted her brightly. “What brings the pleasure of this call this early in the morning?”

Umi visibly scowled at her through the screen. “You _do_ realize that it is past noon, do you not?” she asked.

“Indeed I do,” Nozomi answered her cheerfully. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” Umi deadpanned at her. “Absolutely none. I know your sleep is important to you, Nozomi, but I just wanted to know if you were interested in a piece of news Rin discovered today.”

“Hmmm.” Nozomi pretended to think about it, though she was fairly sure that Umi could see the mischievous smile playing at the corners of her lips. “That would depend on what it was, wouldn’t it?”

For the first time that day, Umi smiled at her. She would be lying if she said the expression wasn’t just a little bit cold.

“Matoi Hiragi is in town for the next few days,” the blue-haired woman began, sounding like she was reading a report to her drill sergeant. “He’s here to represent the estate of the businessman who was killed by his wife last month.”

“That’s all you have for me?” Nozomi asked her through a mouthful of Pocky, her usual breakfast of choice. “I could’ve just turned on the television and figured all that out.”

Unfazed, Umi frowned a little before she continued. “As you know, the man’s wife filed for divorce several times in the past, citing abuse as the reason she wanted to leave, but he refused to proceed with the divorce.” Her voice grew quiet and serious as she went on. “Finally, she decided to fight back against him one night, and I… suppose she got desperate to leave. Regardless, you and I both know what kind of lawyer he is. It doesn’t matter whether something is right or wrong. He has the funds and influence to bribe witnesses and forge evidence, if he has to, in order to win his cases. Under normal circumstances, even if she had a sufficient amount of evidence to back her claims—which it sounds like she does—she still would have no chance of winning her case.”

Nozomi finished the last stick of Pocky in her box, crumpling it up and tossing it casually in her trash can. “I know all of that, Umi-chan,” she replied. “Tell me something I _don’t_ know.”

Umi gave her a half-annoyed, half-indulgent look. “Rumour has it that he has brought his personal files with him this time because he anticipates this to be a longer case. You know, the files of the cases he’s tried to hide from the public eye in addition to all the evidence he has withheld.”

A grin was spreading on her face as Nozomi drank the last of her coffee. “Well well well… It’d be a shame if those files were… _accidentally_ stolen from him and released to the public, wouldn’t it?”

“It would be,” Umi agreed seriously without missing a beat. “He’s staying in the Crown and Dominion Hotel downtown, away from his mansion in Kyoto, where I have no doubt he has an extensive security system to prevent theft. We might not get another chance.”

“No, we might not,” Nozomi replied, rinsing out her cup with her free hand.

“Remember,” Umi reminded her, “he’s the—”

Nozomi cut her off before she could finish her sentence. “I know.”

There were a few moments of silence as the blue-haired woman studied her expression, furrowing her brows in response.

“Do you need the blueprints to the hotel?” Umi asked her finally.

Nozomi grinned back at her. “Nope. Some things are best done… ah, _in the dark._ ”

Umi shook her head once. “Then, I wish you luck.”

“You should know by now that I _always_ have good luck, Umi-chan,” Nozomi informed her before closing the call. “But thanks anyways—you know I appreciate it.”

* * *

Soft rain pattered on the pavement outside the hotel and the click of her heels echoed slightly against the wet cement.

Through the ornate glass doors of the hotel entrance, Nozomi could spot a fair few antiques on display in the lobby. On any other night, they certainly would have piqued her interest, but not tonight. She did her best not to get distracted on nights she had a job to do, although sometimes, she couldn’t help herself.

 _Just_ five _minutes—_

She stomped on the end of that thought. She would have plenty of opportunity to take a closer look at them. Perhaps the next morning, after the police had cleared out of the crime scene.

The thought made her smile very slightly as she hovered in the shadow of the building next to the hotel. She did intend on entering the hotel in question, just not now.

Minutes, then eventually an hour passed in silence, but that did not bother Nozomi one bit. Patience was one of her specialities; after all, one didn't become the best thief in the business without waiting for the most opportune moment to pounce. Watching her step was just one of the things she needed to do if she intended to keep it that way: the inability to wait would just make her the most famous thief—and not in a good way.

Eventually, as most of the lights in the hotel windows flickered off, she saw fit to move in.

Striding up to the attendant behind the counter, she pulled out one of her fake IDs. One more thing she had to thank Umi for, but that could go at the end of her very long to-do list. She offered the man an innocent-enough smile as he greeted her.

“I’m here to rent one of the spa rooms down the hallway, if that’s okay with you,” she told him.

The hotel doubled as a resort—and it was Tokyo. If you worked in the service industry, you learned real fast that people asked for all sorts of strange things in the middle of the night to take advantage of the cheaper prices.

Besides, Nozomi was sure that he’d been asked worse.

“Certainly,” he told her. “How long would you be looking for?” He tapped the price sign on the countertop next to him with a finger.

“Hmmm.” She debated the prospect internally for a fraction of a second. An hour was more than enough to get what she needed done, but she actually wanted to enjoy the facilities that the hotel offered. It was tempting, but she could come back another day for her long-overdue manicure.

“An hour will be fine,” she told the man.

He bowed at her before gesturing to one of the other attendants lingering in the mostly-empty lobby, who led her down a side hallway before showing her to one of the rooms, pressing a keycard into her hand. “I hope you enjoy your stay,” the woman said to her with yet another bow.

Nozomi gave her a smile—this one genuine. “Oh, I’m sure I will.”

_They didn’t even check my belongings. Then again, this is a hotel, not airport security._

Unlocking the door with the keycard, she waited on the other side of the door as she listened for the fading footsteps. She cast one last regretful glance at the towels and skincare products laid out carefully on the tabletop before she slipped on her gloves, quietly letting herself out the door.

Glancing up and down the hallway, she spotted what she was looking for within moments—the service elevator at opposite end of it. It was a good thing there weren’t any security cameras on the first floor of the hotel, Nozomi mused to herself as she tapped on her omnitool, fishing for the employee number to the elevator.

While the security system would register an elevator call to the first floor, it wouldn’t set off any particular alarms. By the time the hotel looked into it, it would be too late.

The highest floor the service elevator would go to was the fifteenth, but that was fine with her. Taking the elevator up to the floor Matoi was residing on would be incredibly stupid, at any rate. She didn’t know the exact floor that he resided in, but that was easily remedied—all she would have to do would be to look for the floor that was more heavily guarded than the rest.

Simple, really, was what she wanted to tell Umi, who she knew was probably gnawing her fingernails off at the moment. Where was the fun in preparing for everything?

Exiting on the fifteenth floor, she spied the single security camera down the hall fixated on the door to the main elevators. It was almost too easy to gently prise the screws off the ventilation system before squeezing herself inside.

It was a tighter fit than she had anticipated—she would have to cut down on the parfaits at some point.

_Oh well._

Putting one hand in front of the other, she began to crawl. It was undignified at best, but she mentally compared it to the indecency of actually getting caught, and almost shuddered. She restrained herself at the last moment—even with her lighter weight, any excess movement would likely create some unwanted noise, which was the first step in that particular direction.

Eight floors up, she peered through the grates, spotting a pair of security guards patrolling an empty hallway. No one else was insane—or rich—enough to hire a pair of guards for a “secure” floor in an expensive hotel, unless they were already a paranoid lawyer with plenty to hide.

_Bingo._

Nozomi counted the guard’s steps as she waited in the ventilation shaft. It was a five minute loop around the circular hallway, and she noticed a water bottle by a particular door. No doubt the rest of the rooms on this particular floor were unoccupied, and she mentally thanked the unnamed guard that had unwittingly given away unexpected information.

Retreating slightly, she opened up her omnitool. It was a good thing it was raining tonight—another stroke of good fortune that she hadn’t counted on—and tapped an application that Umi had installed several heists back.

This particular one allowed a short, quick override of a building’s electrical system. It was completely anonymous—in the sense that its source couldn’t be traced, although a seemingly random power outage would tip off any investigator worth their money. _However…_

Tokyo’s electrical grid was flaky at best, and odd power outages weren’t uncommon, _especially_ when it was storming. That was largely due to the fact that the head of the electrical company was more interested in pocketing his profit instead of using it to upgrade the power grids like he’d promised, but that was a bone to pick for future her.

But as things were, should the hotel’s power happen to go down for a short period of time, it was still connected to the main grid - Nozomi just happened to know that there would be a two-minute time interval before the emergency power supply kicked in.

Two minutes was more than enough; after all, this was a hotel, not a prison.

She tapped the display, and waited.

Twenty seconds later, the entire building was plunged into the darkness just as she noiselessly prised away the covering of the grate.

As things happened, she had conveniently timed the guards' patrol so that they were almost directly underneath her when the grate cover went off.

“Hey,” one of them said, disorientated by the sudden darkness. “What’s going on here?”

“Probably another power outage,” his partner replied.

Nozomi snapped a mask over her face. It wasn’t that she wanted to hide her face—she was waiting for the airborne sedative pack she’d dropped through the hole to take effect. Rin had cooked it up in the lab for her—an odourless, tasteless serum that was released from a pack that resembled a packet of tissues.

Below, the security guards seemed to freeze before slumping slightly against the walls as she dropped down from the ceiling. Both of them would snap out of it under two minutes and be instantly alert. Neither of them would have memory of their unconsciousness, and with a tiny bit of luck, would not notice the time lapse.

Using the keycard bypass Umi had programmed into her omnitool, the battery-powered door indicator in front of her winked green in a matter of seconds.

Nozomi smiled as she nudged the door open—any security alarms or electronically powered traps would have been disabled by the brief power outage. If Matoi was in the room, he would be temporarily incapacitated by the sedative. If not, then he wouldn’t have been there to see her to begin with.

The spacious hotel room was deserted, but Matoi had left an assortment of briefcases out in the open, files scattered over the tabletops and spilling onto the chairs. More importantly, however, the door to the closet was ajar, from which the gleam of a safety deposit box shone faintly.

Lightly stepping over to it, she activated her omnitool again. The lock was easy enough—only five digits, and Umi had installed an X-ray filter on her omnitool—but what was the point of breaking into a see-through lock? None whatsoever. She would most definitely regret it if she didn’t have at least a _little_ bit of fun tonight. In her head, she could hear Umi berating her already, but she closed the door on the blue-haired woman’s imaginary voice. Umi’s concerns could wait.

Instead, Nozomi tapped the audio amplification application on her wrist.

She twirled the dial on the safe’s surface experimentally—it was far too smooth to be something provided by the hotel. That was fine by her, as she began to twist the dial, one cog at a time.

To the normal human ear, the clicks of each cog would have seemed uniform. However, with her omnitool running, each cog instead would have a distinct signature; when a ratchet caught, it produced a much louder sound.

“One,” she breathed to no one in particular. It was a good thing she didn’t have Umi in her ear for this particular adventure: the blue-haired woman had a nasty penchant for interrupting her on the rare moments she needed to concentrate.

The cogs slipped by, millimetre by millimetre. “Two.”

According to her omnitool, she had exactly seventy-one seconds left. Nozomi reminded herself to pick up the pace just a little.

Less than ten seconds later, the lock lay open before her. When she opened the door to the safe, it was a nearly effortless matter for her to hoist the laptop inside it over her shoulder and into a bag. She almost laughed out loud at the pressure pad and wire underneath it—they might as well have been a placemat and decorative string for all the good they were doing at the moment.

Closing the door to the safe and twiddling the lock on it again, she left the closet door exactly as she’d found it.

She still had plenty of time left—forty-two seconds, to be exact—and Nozomi couldn’t resist a last glance around the hotel room. It was almost a shame that she didn’t have any more room to carry anything else—some of the clothes and trinkets the man had brought with him would be enough to feed the children in the slums for months.

She hesitated at the doorstep.

Against what she knew to be Umi’s better judgment—but certainly not hers—she pulled a tarot card out of her pocket. Grinning now just imagining Umi’s ire once she found out about this particular stunt in the news the next morning, Nozomi left it on the dining room table in plain view of the door before she closed it behind her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you all think of this opening chapter. I would love some feedback, especially because I tried to keep Nozomi's nature in her new... _occupation._
> 
> We move to the police department in Chapter 2, in which uh, spoilers, BiBi works for the police.


	2. Case in Point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, it's me.
> 
> A few days isn't so bad, right? I had a ton of fun with this chapter due to the girls that are its subject and I really wanted to get this up last night, but alas, that wasn't the case. (Eli got all CSI with me) That being said, I was _this_ close to naming this chapter "Trouble Busters", but... I restrained myself. 
> 
> Also, thank you guys so much for the amount of comments + positive feedback I received. I wasn't sure how a story of this calibre would be received, but I'm glad it's something that what looks like a lot of you are interested in, so thank you guys again! You have no idea how happy that makes me. ^^
> 
> Onto the chapter!

Eli was a morning person.

At the very least, she liked to be punctual and organized with her time—which went a long way in her chosen career path. It was a difficult career path, to be sure, and not one without its fair share of misogyny, but she would be lying to herself if she said it hadn’t been rewarding... so far, at least. It had taken her a few cases to silence most of the dissent at her precinct, but even if that hadn’t been the case, she knew she wouldn’t have chosen any differently.

The early morning air smacked her in the face as she stepped out of the small elevator of her apartment building and out onto the streets of Tokyo. It was barely 0700, but the streets were already fairly busy with the usual morning traffic. Eli stopped on the edge of the sidewalk at a red light, the slender fingers of one hand wrapped around her coffee.

She scanned the streets as she waited for the light to turn green: the act had turned into a habit. She had learned early on—halfway through her first case, as a matter of fact—that she had to be vigilant and alert at any and every moment. She hated herself for thinking that way, but the sad truth was that crime happened regularly and was never more than an arm’s reach from anyone. It would be foolish for someone who lived in Tokyo to assume that something would never happen to them, and unfortunately, Eli had learned that the hard way.

She squared her shoulders against the dust kicked up by the moving vehicles just as the light turned green. _But that’s why I chose to do this. There was never another option for me._

It was a good thing, she supposed, that she happened to enjoy what she did, and Eli intended on keeping things that way. Her superiors, in turn, had praised her for her work ethic and her dedication to her career and the side of the law that she was supposed to uphold. Tokyo wasn’t perfect—and would never be—but she was determined to do everything in her power make things better for the people that lived in it.

Her usual morning commute to the precinct office generally took her about half an hour. Several crowded train stations and three blocks later, Eli’s phone buzzed in her pocket just before she opened the door to the police station.

Pulling it out, she glanced at the text message displayed on the screen of her phone.

[Ayase Alisa] _Oh my god, I forgot my textbooks on the way to class. D: My professor is going to kill me, and I fell asleep last night before I finished the pre-readings. :Y Anyways, have a good day at work! :3c_

Her sister was a full-time university student studying music who still used an emoji per sentence while texting her older sister—Eli couldn’t help but smile. She unlocked the screen to type back a reply with one hand.

_I will. You too._

With the same free hand, she pushed open the door to the station, and stepped inside.

Inside, it was quiet, with most of the office lights still dimmed—most of the officers wouldn’t be in until just before 0800, but Eli liked to be early, just in case. Besides, she had an autopsy report to pick up from the medical examiners downstairs and she wanted to get a head start on reading it before something inevitably came up.

She had barely descended the stairs to the basement before two loud and very distinct voices drifted up from the M.E.’s office.

“ _Maaaki_ , is it this one?”

“No,” came the short, very irritated reply. “How many times do I have to tell you that the formaldehyde is in the _blue_ bottle?”

“Yeah? But you have _three_ blue bottles on the shelf here! How am I supposed to know which one’s the one you want?”

“You can read, can’t you?”

Eli sighed, and knocked on the door.

There was the sound of a scuffle and a thump followed by several rapid, unsteady footsteps—it sounded like someone had almost tripped on their way to the door, before the door in question was thrown open.

She found herself looking at the short stature of the medical examiner’s assistant. Today, not unlike most days, Yazawa Nico’s hair was tied into messy twintails, and there was a dark stain on the front of her lab coat: no doubt she had spilled something on her front once again and hadn’t bothered to wash it out yet.

“Oh. Eli,” the redhead standing a few feet behind the shorter woman greeted her. “What do you want?”

Nishikino Maki was the station’s forensic pathologist and medical examiner. Like Eli, she was highly passionate about what she did and also had the nasty habit of throwing herself completely into her work. Her autopsies were nothing but thorough, and she was one of the only people in the station that Eli could count on a hundred percent of the time to turn in her work in a timely fashion.

Her short temper, however, was another story—and had a reputation of its own—and it had been the director that suggested Maki hire some help when the amount of autopsies had started piling up. Unfortunately, Maki had been away on leave during the actual hiring process, and the red-headed young woman had come back to a new face in her office with no idea how the woman in question had gotten there.

The only good thing about Yazawa Nico, as far as Eli could tell, was that she had a temper to match Maki’s, which subsequently meant that Maki was far less irritated when she spoke to her because she had an outlet for it otherwise. Yazawa was a self-proclaimed professional, though Eli privately doubted that she knew what the word meant. The two of them spent the majority of their workday arguing about various things—such as the placement of formaldehyde—and considering the amount of time they spent bickering, it was nothing less than something of a miracle that they got any work done at all.

Maki maintained that Yazawa was an annoyance, and that she’d rather not have an assistant at all if the black-haired woman was so incompetent, but Eli had a sneaking suspicion she enjoyed their arguments far more than she let on.

“Is this a bad time?” she ventured, raising an eyebrow at the scene in front of her. “I can come back if it is.”

“No, it’s fine,” Maki replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “Are you here for something?”

“The autopsy report I asked you about yesterday,” Eli told her, glancing at the clock in the far corner of the room. “Did you finish it?”

“Oh. Yeah, it’s here somewhere,” the redhead said. “I told Nico to put it away on my desk yesterday.” She turned her attention to the shorter woman, who was picking at the stain on her lab coat with her bare hands—Eli resisted the temptation to tell her whatever she was touching was hazardous. “ _Please_ don’t tell me you lost it already.”

Stepping over the large, blue puddle on the floor of the office floor, Yazawa made her way over to the two large desks in the corner, hastily ruffling through the piles of papers on top of them. Eli almost winced when one of the sheets fluttered to the floor only to be stepped on in the next moment.

“I know it’s here somewhere…” she muttered, half under her breath. “Where did I put it?”

Several more sheets of paper drifted to the floor. One of them landed in the suspicious blue puddle, the ink on it running almost instantly.

“Nico,” Maki began in a low, threatening voice—one Eli had unfortunately heard far too often. “I hope that nothing you just trampled onto the floor was important.

Yazawa cast a brief glance backwards at the mess behind her. “It’s fine, it’s fine. I think they’re copies of something. Besides, even if they were important, you can just make another copy instead, right?”

A few feet away from her, Eli could see Maki ball her hands into fists, but before the redhead could open her mouth, Yazawa turned around, a small stack of paper scrunched triumphantly in one hand. “I found it!”

She hopped over the puddle on the ground and held it out to her.

Eli took it, and cast one glance at the young doctor standing behind her. Maki did not look amused, and she decided that it was time to make her exit before she had to listen to another argument. She had barely closed the door behind her when she heard Maki yell “What do you mean, it’s _not important_? How many times do I have to stress to you that _every_ file is important? In fact, why are you still here? I should’ve fired you months ago!”

“You can’t fire me,” Yazawa shot back, “I work here!”

Their voices were beginning to give her a tension headache, and it was barely 0800 in the morning. Eli closed the door to the basement stairs with a snap and headed to her office. The rest of the station was mercifully quiet, and she drank the rest of her coffee before throwing the cup out in the trash just inside her office door.

Sitting down at her desk, Eli let her gaze linger on the few personal possessions she kept on her desk for a few moments before she turned her full attention to the autopsy report in her hand. It was a little bit crinkled—no doubt from Yazawa’s careless searching of Maki’s desk—but at least it was dry and legible.

Reading intently and occasionally stopping to make a note or two in her own files, she had gotten through three-quarters of the report before the phone on her desk rang, snapping her out of her concentration.

She put her pen down and reached a hand over to pick it up. “Ayase.”

“Good morning, Investigator,” the voice of her executor issued over the phone. “Do you have time to see me in my office right now?”

“Now?” Eli echoed, glancing down at her half-done paperwork. Her heart seized up for a moment as she processed the request, wondering what it could _possibly_ be about. The executor knew she was still working on her current case and he’d told her just last Friday that he didn’t expect a report until sometime later this week. _What did I do?_

“O-Of course,” she stammered, when she had somewhat regained her composition. “I’ll be right there.”

Her mind wandered in multiple different directions as she made the short walk to the executor’s office, each possibility she thought of slightly worse than the last. To make her anxiety worse, she found the door to his office already open and waiting for her.

“Senior Investigator Ayase,” he greeted her as she walked inside. “Please have a seat.”

Executor Okuda Keiji was an older man with greying hair in his fifties. Incidentally, he had been an investigator himself in his younger days, and he had been the only one willing to take Eli under his jurisdiction when she’d handed in her resume on the very first day. Eli held a healthy amount of respect for the man, and she had assumed—up until five minutes ago, that was—that the feeling was mutual.

 _Why does he want to see me?_ She hoped it wasn’t because she’d done something wrong. “Thank you, sir,” she said nervously as she sat down in the lone chair in front of his desk. “If I may, is this about the case I’m working on right now?”

“No,” Okuda told her. “I’m quite happy with how that particular investigation is proceeding, and I have no doubts that given enough time we’ll get to the bottom of it, but for now, I need you to work on a different case.”

Eli stared at him. “I beg your pardon?” She wasn’t sure if she had heard right—he was happy with how she was handling the investigation and he was certain that she would crack it, so he was _reassigning_ her?

“I need you to take on a new case,” the man repeated. “You have an excellent track record and a keen eye for detail, which is why I need _you_ on this case. Shall I explain?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at what must have been confusion on her face.

“Please,” she told him.

He pulled a file holder out from one of his drawers. It wasn’t thick, but it wasn’t paper-thin either, and Eli could see the various files poking out from its opening. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the morning news yet, but last night, someone broke into the Crown and Dominion Hotel and entered a highly secure room in order to steal a laptop that belonged Matoi Hiragi. You’re familiar with him, I assume?”

She nodded. Matoi was a high-profile lawyer who often handled very public cases—she had spoken to the man’s secretary a few times before in the past.

“Unfortunately, the laptop contained a great deal of, well, shall we say, _incriminating_ evidence against him.” When her superior caught her expression, he pulled out a sheaf of paper and placed it in front of her. “I haven’t had time to go over all the details myself, but it appears that he’s spent a great deal of money bribing witnesses and falsifying evidence in order to win his cases. Of course, the federal courts are a complete mess right now, seeing how many cases he’s settled in the past that now have to be re-examined, but that’s not what I brought you here to discuss.”

He paused for a few moments to remove several more pieces of paper from the file holder. “I need you to investigate the theft itself.”

“The theft?” Eli repeated quizzically, furrowing her brows as she glanced up under her bangs.

“Correct. This is the third prominent member of society that’s been targeted for theft in as many months. I’m sure you recall that famous painting that was stolen from the Tokyo Financial Group back in January that was anonymously mailed to a museum a few days later, as well as the blueprints that were taken from the technical development convention three weeks ago. Granted, both the painting and the blueprints turned out to be illicitly obtained by their previous owners, but all of these thefts took place in highly secured, very public locations, and there was very little incriminating evidence left behind. Apart from the fact that a..." he squinted at a line on the file he was holding as though he had misread it the first time, "tarot... card...? has been left at the site of each theft, I’ll be frank with you, Ayase—there have been no leads.”

Eli rested her chin against the back of a hand as she thought through what she had just been told. “It sounds to me like there’s someone out there who wants to expose the people who hold higher standings in society that are corrupt. But… this isn’t the right way to do it,” she said slowly.

“No,” Okuda agreed. “This isn’t. While I can appreciate the sentiment behind it, there’s a better, far less illegal way to… what’s the phrase? Fight fire with fire. The city's government is starting to pay attention now—not only are they concerned about the security of their affairs, they have better things to do than to clean up scandals left and right when there’s so much to take care of otherwise in this city. The need for a reassignment came from someone much higher than me, or I wouldn’t be pulling you off your current case.”

Eli quickly held up both her hands in a gesture of acknowledgement. “No, I understand,” she said hastily. Her knees felt weak with relief that she hadn’t done something to cost her her job, and a familiar tingle was beginning to run underneath her skin at the prospect of a new investigation, as it always did.

“Good,” the older man said. “Then I need you to get on site as soon as possible. It’s clear that we’re dealing with someone who possesses no little amount of skill in stealth an infiltration and is likely keen on dealing out a particular brand of vigilante justice. I don’t say this lightly, but you’ve got the sharpest senses on this station, Ayase, so I’m assigning you to get to the bottom of this.”

“Understood, sir.”

* * *

Eli arrived on the scene less than an hour later, where she was greeted by a lot of police tape and no shortage of officers in front of the hotel entrance. As she approached the site, an officer in a dark navy uniform approached her. “Sorry lady,” he told her in a monotone, bored voice, as though he’d repeated himself several times over already, “authorized access only.”

She pulled her badge out of the front pocket of her jacket and pushed back a stray strand of blonde hair. “I hope this authorizes me, then? I’m the investigator assigned to this case.” She tried to keep the stiffness out of her voice as she spoke.

She watched as he read the title _Senior Investigator_ across the front of it, before turning his attention back to her, a skeptical look on his face. “I was told by the LT that we were supposed to be getting someone good on this case. Didn’t know you were supposed to be a woman, that’s all.” He shrugged before detaching some police tape to allow her through the blockade.

For a moment, Eli gritted her teeth before she followed him. _I should’ve known._ It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to that kind of attitude, it was that it got extremely irritating—extremely quickly.

“So what can you tell me?” she asked him.

The officer scratched his chin. “Well, I don’t know the full story, but the gist of it is that the stolen laptop was stored in a secure safe in a room up on the twenty-third floor. The rest of the rooms on that floor were unoccupied last night, and that lawyer hired some security guards to patrol the hallway outside, so we’re not sure how someone managed to sneak in there without being seen. That’s all I know—the guys up on the twenty-third might know.”

“Is there any chance I can speak to Matoi himself?” Eli asked, her mind already working at full speed.

“Sorry,” the officer told her. “He’s already been taken away for questioning by some federal investigators for the contents of his files. If you want to speak to him, you’ll have to go through federal security.”

 _Of course._ “What about his security guards?” she pressed. “Are they still here?”

“Oh yeah, they’re still here,” came the offhand reply—the officer wasn’t looking at her; he was looking behind them at some curious passersby on the other side of the police tape. “Sorry ma’am, I have some pedestrians to escort away. Unless you need me to show you the twenty-third floor as well?” he asked her, looking back with a funny look on his face.

“I think I’ll be fine, thank you,” she replied in a voice of forced calm, fixing him with a glare. When the officer had turned his back, she strode off in the other direction into the hotel lobby, thinking hard in an effort to put the less-than-pleasant interaction she’d just had behind her.

_Security guards patrolling an empty hallway on a floor in which he was the only occupant. I suppose I could chalk that down to being paranoid, but how is it possible that no one saw anything?_

She spotted the security guards in question in a corner of the lobby, speaking to a few other officers; having no desire to repeat some semblance of the conversation she’d already had the misfortune of having once, she decided that she would question them later.

After flashing her badge at the front desk, Eli pulled on her gloves and stepped into the elevator. The glass box rose silently and swiftly, and she exited on the twenty-third floor.

Several more officers were in the hallway by an open door. She pulled out her badge again as she approached them. “Senior Investigator Ayase,” she informed them as she stopped in front of the doorway.

She examined the heavy wooden frame and door that was attached to it. The doorway showed no signs for forced entry, nor did she expect there to be any. Thieves skilled at what they did left little—if any—signs of entrance behind them.

“Has this entire floor been checked for prints?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” one of the officers told her. “No one’s but the victim’s and his security guards.”

Eli furrowed her brows as she took a closer look at the keycard lock, noting that it was battery powered before stepping into the suite. “What about security footage?”

“It’s been examined already. Nothing. Well,” one of the other officers admitted with a slightly sheepish look, “we checked all the security footage that was available.”

She looked at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“There was a blackout here last night, just after 2300. It lasted for approximately a hundred and twenty seconds, so we don't have any footage for that time frame.”

The word caught her attention. _A blackout. How convenient. Almost… too convenient, although I can’t say it’s uncommon in Tokyo._ A power outage would have been the most foolproof way to ensure that there would be no surveillance video of the theft itself. The outage wouldn’t have stopped the thief from opening the door, either—most keycard locks were battery powered and would not have been affected by a lack of electricity to the rest of the building. A convenience, she was sure, to the rest of the patrons who didn’t want to be locked out of the suites in the dark.

Eli narrowed her eyes when another realization crossed her mind: one of the downsides to battery-powered locks was that there would be no record of a doorway being opened or closed. _Of course._ It was so simple—and yet so elaborate—that it was almost brilliant.

 _But... you can’t commit a crime and leave nothing behind. I’m sure of it. There has to be_ something _._

 “I’m assuming any electronic security measures in this suite would have been disabled by the blackout as well?” She directed the question at the officer that had followed her into the hotel suite.

The officer nodded as he led her to a closet, from where an open safe was visible. “As far as I’m aware, that seems to be the case, ma’am. Here’s the safe that the laptop was in. The victim reported that the laptop was in there when he left his suite around 2000, but when he returned shortly after 2300 to check on his things, it was gone.”

Squatting down, Eli could see a pressure pad and a wire at the back of the small, metal container. She reached out with a gloved hand and twiddled the dial on the safe’s surface experimentally, noting its heaviness and the smoothness in which the contraption spun. Clearly, it wasn’t a safe that she could just walk into any locksmith’s shop to purchase—just breaking into it alone would have taken either prior knowledge of its security, or technology she wasn’t yet aware of. She took several pictures of the safe and its surroundings before standing up again.

“And this laptop was the only thing that was taken?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” the officer reported. He led her over to the dining room table, where a single tarot card lay on its surface. “As far as we can tell, this was left behind by the thief.”

Gingerly, Eli picked up the thin piece of cardboard and held it up to the light. It appeared to be just a tarot card, though she could never rule out the fact that it could contain something else. She remembered that Okuda had told her a tarot card had been found at the site of each theft. _Clearly a way of indicating it’s the same person each time, but… why?_ If the thief was as skilled as she was beginning to suspect they were, she couldn’t think of a good reason they would have to expose themselves that way.

“This has been dusted?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the officer said again. “No prints on it either.”

Eli pulled a plastic bag out of her pocket and dropped the tarot card into it. “I’m taking this back to the station,” she informed him.

There was nothing else of significance in the suite itself, so she stepped back outside to examine the doorway once more. Taking several pictures of the entryway and the keycard lock, she made her way back to the elevator, still pondering on the subject of why the thief would leave something so obviously incriminating behind on purpose, when they had been—so far—so careful about everything else.

Putting the issue of the tarot card to the back of her mind for the time being, she stared at the numbers flicking down on the display, floor by floor, thinking.

 _The issue still stands that whoever this was has to have gotten in and out of the hotel_ somehow _, whether it was legal or illegal. The case report said that the hotel was locked down shortly after midnight, and all patrons and employees present at the time were searched… which means the thief had to have left the scene by then._

First things first—she needed a copy of the guest list and everyone who had checked in and out of the hotel last night prior to the lockdown. While it was theoretically possible for the thief to break into the building, Eli had a sneaking suspicion that that wasn’t the case. _That_ , at the very least, would have set off some alarms. _No, I’m sure they entered this building legally, or at least with the minimal amount of intrusion._

When she arrived back at the lobby, Eli glanced over at the corner of the lobby where she’d seen the seen the pair of security guards last; she scowled when she saw that they were still speaking to a couple of officers.

Turning on her heel, she crossed the marble floor to the front desk of the hotel again.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she began, stopping in front of a harassed-looking attendant who had just slammed down a phone on the front desk, “but could you give me a copy of the patron list from last night?”

The man eyed her badge uncertainly before he turned his computer screen towards her. “Just last night, ma’am?”

Eli didn’t even stop to think about it. “No. Do you have a list of everyone who checked out last night before the lockdown? If it’s possible, I need a record of when they checked in, which rooms they were staying in, and the duration of their stay.”

She watched a muscle in the corner of the attendant’s jaw jump at her request, but she held her ground. Crossing her arms over her chest as she waited, it was several minutes later when the man handed her a small stack of paper. “Is there anything else you need, ma’am?” he asked her pointedly.

“No, that’ll be all for now,” she informed him. “I’ll let you know if something else comes up.”

Stowing the papers in a pocket on the inside of her jacket, Eli turned her attention back to the pair of the security guards across the lobby. To her relief, the crowd of officers around them had finally cleared.

She strode up to the two men with a purpose, fishing her badge out of her pocket and holding it up as she approached. “I’m the senior investigator assigned to this case,” she introduced herself as she stopped in front of the two of them. “Can I ask you a few questions about last night?”

One of them shrugged at her. “Sure, I guess. We’ve just told the officers over there what happened,” he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards the entranceway, “but I guess.”

“Thank you,” she told him. “Can you tell me what happened last night?”

The first man scratched the top of his head before he rubbed the dark circles under his eyes. “Well, we were just doing our job, like we told the other guys. We didn’t notice anything out of place or anyone there.”

Eli restrained an impatient sigh—she had almost forgotten that open-ended questions didn’t tend to get her a lot of information. “When did your shift start last night?”

“Seven o’clock,” the man told her.

“Did you notice anything unusual at the time?”

“Nope,” his partner replied. “Only that there was a blackout around… eleven, was it? It only lasted a few seconds, and neither of us saw anyone up there then. Matoi dashed back up to his apartment not too long after, and that’s when he said the laptop was missing.”

A phrase in the man’s words made her pause. “Wait,” she said slowly. “A few seconds? Are you sure that’s how long the power outage lasted?”

The man gave her a confused look before he exchanged a quizzical look with his partner. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. I mean, I wasn’t looking at the time or anything, but that’s how long it felt to me.”

Something about the way he said it told Eli that he was speaking the truth—or at the very least, he thought he was.

_But... that can’t be right. Either the case report and the hotel’s records are wrong, or they are. The power outage lasted just under a hundred and twenty seconds. It doesn’t matter how you spin it, but there’s no way that that can feel like ‘just a few seconds’, unless…_

_Unless…_

“I need the two of you to report to the police station. Now,” she said firmly to the two men.

“Excuse me?” one them asked her incredulously. “We were just told we weren’t going to be held accountable for anything connected to Matoi. You telling us that that’s wrong?”

“No,” Eli told him. “I need a blood sample from you.” She phrased the sentence as a suggestion, but her voice was slightly unsteady at the sudden surge of adrenaline, her heart pounding against her sternum. Her intuition was hardly ever wrong, and if her suspicions were correct this time, then she hoped Maki would find a trace of something abnormal in the mens’ systems.

 _As remotely plausible as it is… it’s the only explanation. I don’t know if short-term sedatives exist or if they would still be in the bloodstream after all this time, but… I have to make sure._   

Without bothering to explain why and leaving the startled pair of security guards behind, she spun around and walked a few feet away before pulling her phone out of her pocket and dialing Maki’s number. She tapped her foot against the floor impatiently as the call connected.

“Hello?” the redhead’s voice issued out of the speakers—she sounded relieved at the prospect of having someone else to talk to.

“Maki, it’s me,” Eli said into the phone quickly. “Listen, I’m sending the two security guards that worked for Matoi to your lab. I need you to run some blood tests on them. The usual: drugs, illicit substances, anything suspicious. I need the results as soon as possible—can you put them on my desk for me when you’re done?”

“Wait,” Maki stuttered on the other end of the line. “ _Matoi_ ’s security guards? When the hell did you get reassigned? I thought—”

“Look, I don’t have time to discuss this with you right now." Eli cut her off. “We can talk about this later when I’m back, but right now, can you _please_ make sure this gets done as soon as they show up?”

She heard a sigh crackling over the speakers. “Okay,” Maki grumbled. “I’ll make time for it today.”

Hanging up, Eli made sure that one of the officers loitering around the lobby was taking the pair of security guards over to the police station before she made her way over to the elevator again: there was one final thing she wanted to double check before she left.

Exiting on the twenty-third floor, she traced the guards’ footsteps around the hallway. It was straight, the doorway to Matoi’s hotel suite always visible at some point in the circuit.

If she was right—and she was fairly sure she was—then the theft had to have happened in the two minutes that the building had experienced a power outage. It was the only time frame in which such a theft, with little to no evidence left behind, was even remotely possible.

The security guards’ story seemed to corroborate this, _especially_ if her hunch was right—that they had somehow been incapacitated during those one hundred and twenty seconds. She didn't know with what or how, but she intended to find out.

The elevator wouldn’t be functioning during a power outage, and she doubted that the emergency exit stairway at the other end of the hall would have been automatically unlocked by a lack of electricity.

That left…

Eli looked up at the grate of the single ventilation shaft a few feet above her head. It was fairly sizeable; she was only 5’5, but judging by the size of the shaft, someone her size, at least, would be able to fit quite easily into it.

 _Is this how you did it?_ she wondered as she stood there. _Who are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I've mentioned this somewhere in "Heaven is a Place on Earth", but I tend to update weekly for my fics, so I'll try to keep that arrangement up for this summer. I've got a few classes to take care of, but let's be real here, idols > classes. :')


	3. Party Crashers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone!
> 
> This chapter is out slightly later than I originally wanted it to be (I had to deal with some personal things this past week and it was awhile before I was in a good place to write), so for that, I apologize. It's also not the most exciting chapter on the surface of the planet, but I tried to throw some small gems in there.
> 
> I also just wanted to take the time to thank everyone again for the feedback/kudos. It really means a lot to me and it makes me excited to continue the story! ;___;

Nozomi yawned with a hand over her mouth as she sat down in her favourite café. She rubbed the fatigue from last night out of her eyes as a familiar brown-haired young woman made her way towards her usual table at the back of the tiny coffee shop.

“Good morning, Nozomi!” Umi’s fiancée greeted her, smoothing out the front of her apron before she caught the undoubtedly tired expression on her face with a small frown. “I heard you had a late night last night again.”

“You could say that,” Nozomi told her with a faint smile. “Nothing my usual won’t get rid of, though.”

Kotori laughed, her voice light and musical. “Coming right up.” 

Giving her a wave as the brunette returned to the kitchen, Nozomi pulled her phone out of her pocket once Kotori was gone. It wasn’t often that Umi’s lectures stuck with her, but not activating her omnitool in public was one of the few that did. She knew better than _that_ , at least.

She browsed through the morning news on the small screen, noting with no small degree of satisfaction that nearly all of the news articles were about the now-disgraced lawyer—the rest of them were about the cases that needed to be re-examined now that the truth was out.

She smiled to herself. _Excellent._

Soft footsteps announced Kotori’s return as the brunette placed a parfait in front of her before pulling a spoon out of the front of her apron. “Are you sure you’re not going to fall asleep eating that?” she asked; it was tantamount to Kotori’s personality that she couldn’t tell whether the concern in her voice was genuine or joking.

“I can’t do that,” Nozomi told her, picking up the spoon. “That would be an insult to the masterpiece that’s sitting in front of me.”

The tinkle of the bell above the café’s entrance broke into their conversation as Kotori turned towards the door, already greeting her customers as she made her way over to them. Nozomi watched her go, smiling slightly again. Umi was a lucky woman indeed: not many people had the ability to appease the paranoid, somber young woman at nearly all times of day without consuming a drop of her patience.

That, and Kotori generally made sure Umi didn’t worry herself sick six days out of seven in a week.

_That’s love, I suppose._

On some days, she supposed she would be lying if she said she wasn’t… was envious even the right word? It was an entertaining thought—even though she had spent the majority of her life alone, Nozomi had never considered herself a solitary person by nature. On the other hand, that meant finding someone that was okay with her current lifestyle.

 _And_ that’s _where the problem is every time, isn’t it? Oh well_ , she mused to herself as she stirred her spoon in her ice cream before putting it in her mouth. _I have plenty of time to finish up what I’m doing now before moving on to more… entertaining things. Besides, no one said I couldn’t enjoy the view in the meantime._

Resting her chin on her hand, she stared absentmindedly out the window of the café as she slowly ate the rest of her parfait; it was almost noon, and the streets outside were beginning to become crowded with Tokyo’s daily dose of shoppers and tourists alike.

Watching other people had always fascinated Nozomi. Perhaps it was a side-effect of the job; she wasn’t exactly sure _where_ her interest had stemmed from, but it was almost instinct for her to pick out small details about people as they passed by. While she would never claim it to be one of her—admittedly few—hobbies that didn’t involve breaking into one thing or another, it _was_ a form of entertainment on otherwise slow mornings in which she wasn’t as keen as she ought to have been in getting out of bed.

To be _perfectly_ fair, that was _most_ mornings, but she’d had the sleep schedule discussion with herself once already that day. Nozomi shut the door on her inner voice that told her she really should try to work on changing it soon.

A head of blonde hair caught her attention in the corner of her eye. Unlike the rest of the shoppers outside, the steps of the woman it belonged to were hurried and purposeful. Nozomi frowned—she did not like serious people: they reminded her too much of Umi, whom which she could only deal with so much on a daily basis.

She trailed her spoon in the remnants of her ice cream.

_Some people really need to learn how to relax._

* * *

Eli sat stubbornly at her desk, buried up to her eyeballs in case files. Okuda had forwarded her _every single file_ the precinct had on their mysterious thief, and it had taken an hour or two alone just to sort through them.

Now that the majority of them had been put in their respective folders, she could focus on the task at hand… sort of. Maki had mentioned to her in passing sometime after lunch that the two security guards had indeed shown up at her laboratory that morning, but she hadn’t heard anything from her since.

She resisted the temptation to check in on the redhead downstairs in her lab; more than likely that would only earn her a slammed door in the face—something that had happened on more than one occasion before—and Eli tried to concentrate on the three tarot cards in evidence bags on her desk in front of her.

As far as she could tell, they were brand new and had come directly from an unopened deck. They didn’t look particularly expensive either; if she wanted to, she could probably walk into any second-hand store and buy a package of them herself. However, Eli didn’t put much stock into fortune telling, and the extent of her religious and spiritual belief was accompanying her sister to a shrine every New Years.

All that being said, however, she didn’t believe for one second that the cards were meaningless. The cards themselves were harmless enough, but they said something about the thief’s character because they had been left there on purpose to make a statement. _And if_ I _was crazy enough to make a statement about something like this, then I would’ve made sure that the thing I chose to leave behind was at least symbolic._

Perhaps she was getting ahead of herself, but Eli was sure that there was a connection there, somewhere. In any case, it was a lead—however implausible—that she hadn’t had before.

She rifled through the notes she had made on the case files earlier, a task that had taken the remainder of the afternoon after she had organized everything else that had been dumped on her desk. Technically, she was supposed to off now—a quick glance behind her at the gathering darkness outside her window confirmed this particular fact—but Eli knew that she would not be able to leave until Maki had gotten back to her, at the very least.

 _So, whoever this is exclusively targets prominent members of society who have either gotten their money illegally, or are venal in general._ It made sense to her, then, that if she wanted to figure out who they were—or even better, catch the thief in question—then she needed to do some digging into some potential next targets. The thought intrigued her; while she would never claim to be interested in the sort of vigilante justice the thief seemed intent on doling out, exposing corrupt members of society could only be a good thing—

Her cellphone rang, interrupting her thought process. Because it was her personal phone and not her office phone, Eli thought about ignoring it and letting it go to voicemail for a moment, but then she remembered that she was supposed to be on her way home already.

Pausing only to look at the name on the display before she picked it up, Eli grimaced when she remembered exactly why her sister was calling her.

“Hello?”

“Hey, sis," came Alisa’s voice on the other end. “How was work?”

“Actually,” Eli admitted a little sheepishly, “I’m still there.”

She heard a long-suffering sigh from the other end of the line. “Don’t you think you work too much?” her sister asked her. “I mean, don’t you care about, like, a social life or something at _all_? Do you even go _out_ if you’re not at work?”

Eli almost rolled her eyes—a _social life_ was something her sister bugged her about almost every time they spoke, whether it was in person or over the phone and she _knew_ Alisa knew her much, much better than that. “No,” she replied empathetically, switching the receiver over to her other hand so she could pick up her pen again. “I’m just _very_ busy right now. I got a new case this morning, and it’s important.”

“You say that about _every_ case you get,” Alisa responded, before her voice shifted to something less playful and more demure. “Anyways, I know I already asked you about this, but do you think you could forward me the rest of my tuition tonight? It’s kind of… due tomorrow.”

Eli bit her bottom lip when she remembered that she had had this particular conversation with her younger sister a week or two ago; it had completely slipped her mind in the time since because she spent the majority of her time thinking about work. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’ll do it tonight when I get home. Send me a text if I don’t get back to you about it, okay?”

“Okay,” her sister agreed, “but you better actually _go home_ soon, got that?”

She laughed a little at the forcefulness in the words. “Alright, alright, I get it.”

“Good,” Alisa told her. “Love you.”

Eli smiled. “Love you too,” she said before hanging up.

She had no sooner put her cellphone away and just returned to reviewing her case notes when a knock came on her door.

Without waiting for an answer, Yazawa Nico poked her head around the doorframe with a disgruntled look on her face.

“Of course you’re still here,” she observed.

“Can I help you?” Eli asked her, although she had put down her pen, her heartbeat catching at the back of her throat when she realized Yazawa was holding something in her other hand.

“Yeah, you can,” the shorter woman told her in an irritated tone, holding it out. “You can stop calling stat reports on Maki so I can do less work in the morning. Here you go, since you wanted them so badly.” She paused for a second. “I, uh, might’ve spilled some of Maki’s coffee on that because she was yelling at me to print them out. Sorry—but hey, at least you can still read it.”

Before Eli could come up with an appropriate response to that statement, Yazawa quickly backed away and slammed the door shut behind her; she could hear the thump of rapid footsteps on the hallway outside.

For a moment, she considered going after the twintailed woman so she could get a cleaner copy of the report in her left hand right now, but Eli decided against it: it wasn’t worth the argument she was sure was coming if she did.

Attempting to put Yazawa’s unprofessionalism to the back of her mind—it wasn’t something she could change _right now_ , at any rate—Eli looked down at the report in her hand.

Sure enough, dark stains covered the bottom half of the first few pieces of paper, turning the edges wavy and causing some of the ink to run. Nonetheless, it was still more or less legible, and she quickly scanned the bottom of the page where Maki had made some notes.

_No trace of any illicit or suspicious drug has been detected in the victims’ bloodstream; however, arterial blood gases in both victims show an elevated PaCO₂ and a lowered PaO₂. Respiration rates were within normal range and breath sounds were audible in both lungs, but appeared to be diminished in both lower lung fields._

_These findings are consistent in patients who have taken drugs that depress the respiratory centre. Because no trace of the drug remains in the bloodstream, it is a likely conclusion that these abnormal results are indicative of an inspiratory drug of such a nature._

_Although no such drug exists in the current pharmaceutical catalogue, it is not an unfounded assumption to conclude that an unknown drug with these properties may have been used._

Eli read the paragraphs once, then again to make sure she was sure of what she was looking at. _I knew it._

An idea was beginning to brew in her mind—a dangerous idea, to be sure—and Eli was quite sure Okuda would not approve of it had she still needed his permission to conduct an investigation. It was a good thing she didn’t, she mused as she put Maki’s report in her bag along with a copy of the hotel’s guest list to look over once she was back in her apartment.

She had yet to read every single file, but Eli knew that the answer, or, at the very least, what could lead her _to_ the answer, was in there somewhere. _There’s no doubt that they’ve been careful, but… I still don’t believe that you can commit a crime of this calibre and leave_ nothing _behind._

No, the thief was there in the hotel guest list, somewhere. It was more than clear that whoever they were, they had access to a lot of resources that she didn’t. Eli thought back to the way the lock and the safe had been broken into, and the bloodwork results Maki had just given her.

But that didn’t mean they’d left her with absolutely nothing to go on. She only had assumptions, perhaps a gut feeling at best, but it was a start. Whoever the thief was, they were likely spiritual—or at least believed in frivolous things like fortune telling—judging by the tarot cards left behind, and an obvious penchant for vigilante justice, which usually stemmed from a less than fortunate upbringing.

And Eli was beginning to suspect that the only way she was going to catch him or her was if she found out enough about their next potential victims to apprehend them at the scene of their next heist before it happened.

That meant, of course, that she was going to have to do some digging on her own time to compile a list of possible future victims, but as usual, the thought of the task didn’t daunt her at all.

_If that’s what it takes to solve this case, then I’ll do it._

* * *

Nozomi clapped her hands together in front of the small shrine she kept in her apartment, closing her eyes and standing still for a few minutes.

She didn’t have many rituals—mainly due to the fact that her sleeping schedule was far too erratic to keep up with any sort of regular schedule to her day, but this was one she made sure she completed each day.

Making her way to her kitchen afterwards, she made herself a cup of hot chocolate, and then decided to add a dash of liqueur from her fridge for good measure. There was little more relaxing than sitting on her overstuffed couch with a blanket and a cup of spiked hot chocolate at… what, ten-thirty in the evening? If she was lucky, it might even help her sleep earlier tonight—a step in the right direction for fixing her sleeping schedule.

Nozomi had just taken a warming sip when her omnitool dinged. She glanced at the display, then rolled her eyes. _Umi. Of course. Why am I not surprised?_ For a very brief moment, she contemplated ignoring it and leaving Umi to her own devices for the evening, but then she thought better of it. Surely, if she ignored the blue-haired woman now, not only was she going to get lectured the next time she was called, Kotori was going to be upset with her tomorrow morning for causing her fiancée undue anxiety. Nozomi had absolutely no desire to get chewed out twice.

She flipped the display up on her omnitool. “Yes, Umi-chan?” she asked patronizingly, levelling a mock glare at the other woman’s image. “Here I am, trying to fix my sleep schedule like you asked, and here you are disrupting me while I’m putting in my best efforts.”

Umi did not seem fazed by her attitude one bit, and it was tantamount to the fact that the blue-haired woman had news to report because she didn’t even rise to the jab. “Nozomi, listen,” she said hurriedly, impatiently pushing a stray strand of dark blue hair out of her eyes. “Akira Goto is in town.”

Nozomi's eyes widened at her words. “Are you sure?” she demanded as she sat up, almost upending her mug in the process.

“Positive,” Umi replied, her voice crisp and matter-of-fact. “Rin did a sweep of the dealer channels tonight on her break. He’s hosting a large celebration at his mansion in a week and a half. Officially, he’s calling it a business gathering, but you know the type of people that are going to be invited.” The blue-haired woman scowled as she went on. “He’s just going to use the occasion as an excuse to sign some illegal deals for his weapons and possibly import some smuggled goods so he can claim a patent and sell it as such.”

Sitting back slightly, Nozomi wrapped her right hand around her mug again and took another sip. “So what do you have for me, Umi-chan?” she asked.

Umi squared her shoulders—visible even in the small hologram—and looked at her with a serious amber gaze. “He keeps records of all his business dealings in a disc in a vault underneath his mansion. Under normal circumstances, even _I_ don’t think you would be able to break into his property undetected. But since he’s planning on opening the doors to his mansion for this party…” she trailed off, and Nozomi grinned as she realized that Umi had caught up with her thoughts at least.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Umi-chan?”

Umi gave her a skeptical, concerned look. “I don’t know, Nozomi... I _do_  think that this is a rare opportunity, but how are you going to get yourself an invite? If you want to pull this off, I think you _have_ to at least get in through the front door as an invited guest.”

“You’re forgetting who you’re talking to, Umi-chan,” Nozomi replied dismissively as she set her mug down carefully on the coffee table in front of her. “Besides, we have a week and a half. I’m sure we can think of a few ways to crash this particular party, don’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :')
> 
> Stay tuned, fam. Nozo Heist #2 coming soon to a fic near you.


	4. The Angels' Second Advent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wew.
> 
> Evening folks. This chapter ended up being a lot harder for me to write than anticipated for some reason, but I'm reasonably pleased with the end product. I'm really, really loving writing this particular incarnation of Nozomi (she's such a wonderful and refreshing change from the Nozomi I decided to portray in "Heaven is a Place on Earth"), and I hope that everyone else enjoys what they see of her as well. ^^
> 
> Enjoy - and thanks to everyone as usual for the comments and kudos! I live for them.
> 
> (Side Note, because some of you guys asked last time: Nozo's outfit this time around was inspired by the [unidolized June/Wedding SR](http://i.schoolido.lu/cards/328Nozomi.png). Oh yeah - happy early birthday, Non-tan!)

Umi adjusted the transparent, gauzy material that Nozomi had draped around her shoulders above her strapless dress before stepping back to give her an analytical look.

“Well?” Nozomi prompted her. “How do I look?”

Umi frowned, eyeing her critically. “Good, but—”

Rin clamped a hand over the blue-haired woman’s mouth, muffling the rest of her sentence. “Umi-chan, she looks _perfect_! I don’t know what nya are complaining about, especially after I worked so hard on her hair, too!” The younger woman pouted for a moment before giving Nozomi a grin underneath a shock of violent orange hair. “Nozomi, nya’re going to be the absolute _centre_ of attention at the party!”

She grinned back at Rin. “My my, Rin. You’re flattering me, but I don’t think that’s what we want tonight.”

Umi wriggled her way out of Rin’s grip, fighting off the orange-haired woman’s hands when Rin attempted to put her hands over her mouth again. “No, it most certainly is _not_!”

Rin stuck her tongue out at Umi. “You know what I mean!” she complained, rolling up her sleeves again as she reached above Umi’s head on her tiptoes to retrieve the final thing Kotori had lent her for the occasion tonight from the shelf nailed to the wall.

The string of pearls Rin placed around her neck were cool and heavy against her bare skin, and Nozomi adjusted it slightly before she flicked a glance at her reflection in the mirror down the hall. “Thanks, Rin.”

The younger woman grinned again. “No problem. Otherwise nya’d look really out of place at a society party without that getup,” she replied, shooting a look at Umi, who was still wearing a disgruntled expression on her face as she consulted her omnitool for what had to be the umpteenth time that evening again.

“Remember,” the blue-haired woman said seriously, “your cover tonight is under the name of a woman named Wang Liu-Mei. Your father is a corporate giant overseas in China, who deals specifically in high tech weaponry and technology. He is currently busy with other affairs in his factories, so you are here to represent him. In other words, precisely the type of person Goto respects.”

Nozomi smiled at the report. “I assume you went ahead and took the liberty of giving me a reputation?”

“Of course,” Umi told her casually. “Papers, interviews, and a photoshoot or two in a magazine. All fictional, but he won’t be able to the difference. Just… don’t start talking business with him, and you’ll be fine.”

“ _Umi-chan_ ,” Rin complained. “She _knows_ all of that!”

Umi scowled at the orange-haired woman, but ignored her before continuing. “Your omnitool should be able to pass as a watch to his security. They won’t hassle you over something you claim was made by your company. That reminds me…”

She strode over to the computer desk that served as her daily seat. It was meticulously organized—unlike Nozomi’s own desk at home—and it took no more than a few seconds for Umi to find what she was looking for in one of the drawers.

When she turned around again, Nozomi realized it was a pistol.

“What is this for, Umi-chan? Surely you don’t expect me to _shoot_ my way in?” she asked innocently.

“No, of course not,” Umi replied. She raised her serious amber gaze up to her own green one. “Just in case.”

Meeting her gaze, Nozomi said nothing, but took it and placed it in the purse she was planning to carry with her.

“Nozomi.” Umi spoke her name with a calculated seriousness, the syllables almost tangible in the late afternoon sunlight peeking through the blinds. “Are you _sure_ that no one will recognize you tonight?”

She paused, a small, half-smile crossing her lips as she turned slightly to look at the other woman. “Oh, I’m sure. I’m the _best_ thief in the business, not the most famous. Do you even know someone that can put a name to my face, other than you two and Kotori? Besides,” she said, the corner of her mouth quirking into a smile, “it’s not like I’m the only one who'll trying to steal from Goto tonight. You know as well as I do that he's got his fair share of enemies, and some of them will definitely find a way to be there tonight. Trust me, Umi, he may know little old me by reputation once he finds out he's been stolen from, but he won't have the information to figure out who I am or how I did it before he gets arrested. In fact, Miss Wang will be the _last_ person he suspects tonight.”

Umi met her response with a steady silence—accepting, but the caution remained.

“Are we ready?” Rin asked, already standing impatiently by the door, clearly itching to go.

Turning her head, Nozomi smiled at her. “Patience, my young Rin,” she said. “But I think so. Unless there were any last warnings you wanted to give me, Umi-chan?"

Umi furrowed her eyebrows a little. “Don’t get caught,” she said, sniffing a little in disdain at her teasing tone.

She laughed; it was Umi’s customary goodbye. “Oh, _that…_ you can count on. Come on, Rin-chan.”

* * *

Rin’s black sedan with tinted windows was waiting for them in the garage of Umi’s apartment, and Nozomi climbed into the passenger seat, careful not to catch the hem of her dress on anything. It wasn’t an outfit she was used to wearing and she felt strangely exposed, but it was something she could get used to. _Perhaps a few years down the line,_ she mused to herself, when she moved on to more ludicrous forms of employment.

Rin started up the car and they rolled smoothly out of the underground garage. The orange-haired woman squinted a little in the setting sun before setting up her GPS. “We should be there in about half an hour,” she reported after clumsily tapping in the coordinates with one hand.

Humming in reponse, Nozomi looked out the dark windows as the streets of Tokyo flicked by one by one. She had grown up here, but the Tokyo now was very different from the one twenty years ago. _No less corrupt, unfortunately_ , she reflected as she adjusted her grip on her handbag slightly.

“Here we are,” Rin announced cheerfully twenty minutes later, flicking off the radio station she had been listening too as they pulled up to the gates of a mansion. “Good luck, Nozomi,” she said with a grin and a jaunty wave.

Nozomi laughed softly. “Rin, you should know by now that I _always_ have good luck.” Stepping down from the car and onto the pavement, she returned the wave. “See you later.”

She watched the black car pull around the corner before she approached the wrought-metal gates. Her heels clicked on the smooth cement that led up to the entrance to the mansion and she readjusted the thin shawl around her shoulders.

One of the security guards at the gate approached her, holding out a portable scanner. “Sorry, ma’am,” he apologized politely—no doubt as he had been instructed to do, “but I just have to scan you before you go in. Would you mind standing still for a moment?”

“Of course,” Nozomi replied. She handed her handbag to his partner, who looked through it quickly, making no comment about the handgun within in. She raised her arms very slightly for the man to pass the scanner over her long gloves and where the omnitool was fastened over her wrist; Umi had cleverly disguised it as an ornamental watch for the evening, and as there were no incriminating components to the device, she highly doubted that the man would pick something up on his scanner.

“Is there a problem here?” A soft, oily sort of voice interrupted her thoughts as Nozomi looked up.

A short, thin man with a greying goatee was walking towards them. Her heartbeat picked up ever so slightly as Nozomi recognized him as none other than Goto himself.

“No sir,” the guard replied. “Just doing a scan.”

The older man turned towards her. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he greeted her, clasping his hands behind his back. “Goto Akira.”

Nozomi offered him a smile, her lips pressed tightly together so that she could almost taste the lipstick on them. “I’ve heard a lot about you,” she replied easily. “Wang Liu-Mei.” She offered her gloved hand to him as a greeting of her own, and almost laughed out loud when he kept his firmly behind his back.

The flicker of a smile crossed Goto’s face. “And I’ve heard a lot about you, ah… _Miss_ Wang. Your father is a very busy man, if the internet is to be believed.”

“That he is,” Nozomi informed him lightly. “I’m sorry that he isn’t able to be present tonight.”

“Nothing on the scans, sir,” the guard beside them reported, breaking into the conversation.

Goto smiled again, this time the expression slightly less icy than champagne that had been sitting in the fridge all day. “You may pass through, Miss Wang. You were invited, after all. I hope you enjoy yourself tonight.”

“Thank you,” she told him, returning the smile with one of her own, this time allowing the expression to part her lips very slightly. “I’m sure I will.”

Following him into his spacious mansion, Nozomi could not resist taking a look around as she stepped over the threshold. Her heels were muted on what she was sure was a carpet that cost more than what most honest people made in months, and her gaze caught on an expensive chandelier that reflected the setting sun’s fiery gaze into a thousand different facets of light.

 _If only I wasn’t here on…_ official _business tonight…_

While it would be certainly illuminating for her to mingle with the several dozen or so businessmen gathered in small groups around her, she had work to do. The first thing on her list was to locate the vault itself—then she could worry about casing the security around it.

She accepted some water in an expensive wine glass from a passing waiter, careful to avoid the alcohol. As much as she appreciated her fine wine, she had plenty of other opportunities to get inebriated. Preferably tomorrow morning, after all of this was over, but that was something future her could consider.

On her left, Nozomi noticed a locked door slightly down a hallway. The other doors in the area were open and unlocked, which meant that the door in question probably led to a security room.

 _I’ll probably have to get in there at some point tonight._ She made a mental note to herself before continuing down the hallway.

Passing by two businessmen talking near a large, expensive painting, she stopped to greet them briefly before moving on. _Can’t appear_ too _anti-social tonight, or Goto will be onto me faster than all the illegal patents he’s smuggling in right now._ Smiling to herself at the thought, Nozomi made her way around the back of the ballroom at the very end of the hallway, ending up outside in the mansion’s back garden.

Here, dim garden lights were already set up around the carefully-trimmed hedges and flowers as she weaved her way around several party goes, pausing a few times to speak briefly to one or two of them.

 It was surprisingly easy to discuss arms, she found—though most of the businessmen she stopped to talk to were more interested in talking about _her_ as opposed to discussing what her father supposedly did for a living. Nozomi had to control her laughter more than once. _If only they knew…_

Finally excusing herself politely from a man who had to be double her age, she spotted a staircase underneath the steps that led from the main house. _Aha._

Unless she was sorely mistaken—and she highly doubted that she was—then she had discovered the passageway that led to Goto’s vault. Nozomi vaguely remembered that Umi had said something about the entrance being outside once or twice in the past week, but if truth was told, she hadn’t really been paying attention to Umi’s often hours-long lectures—where was the fun in that?

Carefully, she approached the set of stairs, scanning her immediate surroundings for the presence of cameras. It would be almost career-ending if she let some recording of herself end up in a surveillance tape, and _that_ was a mistake she did not intend on making anytime soon if she wanted to keep her reputation intact.

Spotting one above her head a foot or two down the flight of steps, she flicked open her omnitool: a quick scan told her it was motion-activated.

 _Well,_ that’s _an easy fix. It’s a shame he didn’t invest in something a little more high-tech. Probably spent the majority of his security budget on his actual vault instead._ It was a little too bad that that wasn’t going to help him, but Nozomi resisted the temptation to say that particular sentence out loud as she leaned forward on her tiptoes as far as her high heels would allow. Furrowing her brows, she managed to get a fairly good grip on the sensor with her left hand. Very gently twisting the neck of the device, she slowly adjusted it until it was surveying the ceiling, which meant the floor was now safe—for the time being. Her solution would only last until the next guard shift change, but she intended to be long gone before then.

Descending the stairs as quickly and as discreetly as her high heels would allow, she made her way through a short granite-lined hallway before stopping in front of the only door it contained.

She palmed the door control, which slid back effortlessly to reveal a smaller room with a much more elaborate setup than the one she’d just passed through. Nozomi took a few steps over the threshold, then paused to look around, spotting a console at the back of the room. She made her way over to it so that she could examine it in more detail.

_Hmmm. A password protected voice lock and a kinetic barrier. Looks something like the AR-518 series Rin got her hands on from that dealer awhile back. Everything a vault needs to be impenetrable… in theory, of course._

She turned on her omnitool again as she backed out of the small room, disabling its communication function for the time being. She could deal with an anxious Umi on the other end of the line later—right now, she needed to focus on the task at hand.

Stepping out of the dim hallway and back out into the garden, she took a small sandwich from one of the silver trays set up near the patio. Under the guise of eating it slowly, Nozomi made a mental catalogue of the things she needed to do in order to break into the vault.

_Good sandwiches though. It’s a shame I can’t afford these on a daily basis. Maybe, if…_

She slapped duct tape over her inner voice—that was something she could think about tomorrow. _First things first: I’ll need a voice sample for the voice lock— probably’ll have to chat up Goto for that one. I’ll have to find the password somewhere too. Maybe in that security room?_

She narrowed her eyes. _And as for the barrier, I guess I’ll have to cut the power. Never fails… if I can find it._

Nozomi smiled to herself in anticipation. If Goto thought that sort of system was going to stop her, he was in for a nasty surprise: she could probably break through a system like that in her sleep.

Finishing her sandwich, she meandered around the garden under the pretense of examining the perfectly manicured flowers whose perfumed scent hung heavily in the air, unnaturally sweet for this time of year. She wrinkled her nose at the smell—it was overwhelming and far too artificial for her taste.

 A landline fastened to the corner of the building behind a rosebush caught her eye. From what she could discern, it led back to the small underground hallway that led to Goto’s vault. _Why_ else _would you have this sort of landline attached to your house?_

Tapping her omnitool once, she set it to scan for electromagnetic wiring, mentally thanking Umi for that particular upgrade. She waited for the scan to register, noting that it led her back into the mansion.

_No problem—I should find Goto to have our little chat, anyways._

Carefully ducking around a pair of drunken guests, Nozomi couldn’t help herself when she saw an abandoned datapad lying on one of the tables next to the large fountain Goto had installed in his backyard. She picked it up and turned it on—it wasn’t even password locked.

_Taiki--_

_There’s no way we’re getting out of the party tonight. This place is locked down almost as tight as the airport, and Chief Ishida’s in charge tonight. He wouldn’t let that kind of thing slip past him._

_Sorry, but I’d rather be bored than risk him getting pissed at us._

Her smile grew when she realized the context of this particular message.

_Security Chief Ishida, huh. I bet that’s who’s in the security room tonight. Let’s see if I can’t use that to my advantage._

Carefully replacing the datapad where she’d found it, Nozomi set her sights back towards the mansion, now lit up in the gathering darkness by hundreds of tiny lights from the large chandelier. Through the brightly lit ballroom, she could spot Goto speaking with a few guests near one of the potted plants. All she needed to do was to keep him talking long enough for her omnitool to get a voiceprint.

_Maybe I’ll need to pull out the charm on this one. We’ll see._

She approached him casually, as though she wasn’t interested in what he was saying to two of his other guests: a man and a woman in their forties. She stepped close enough to the trio to listen in on the conversation, but had her head deliberately turned away to examine the large painting behind a potted plant.

She pushed a stray stand of hair back with one hand delicately as she examined the brush strokes. Soft footsteps on the plush carpet behind her a few minutes later told her that Goto had noticed her presence.

“Miss Wang,” he said as he came up to her. “I hope you’re enjoying your evening so far?”

“Oh yes,” Nozomi told him, half-turning her head in his direction, letting her dark bangs fall over a side of her face. “Very much so.”

“I see that you have a rather expensive taste in art,” he observed, looking up at the same painting she was examining. “Not that that’s a bad thing, of course.” He laughed, taking a sip out of the wineglass in his left hand.

“Indeed I do,” she replied easily. “Art is a wonderful form of expression. It’s a shame that I don’t have time to enjoy it more often, though. I’m sure you know what I mean,” she said delicately, tilting her head to one side for effect.

“Ah, yes,” Goto replied. “All too well. In our line of work, we attract a certain… atmosphere, shall we say? Very few people understand what it takes to maintain the sort of status we have and the things we do to keep the economy afloat. They operate under the guise that everything is perfect in their perfect little world, and never suspect the things that need to be done to maintain their gleeful delusions of peace.”

The words were sour and made her feel slightly nauseous, but Nozomi swallowed her distaste and plastered a knowing smile on her face. “Of course,” she agreed amicably. “May there always be a market for the things we do.”

The man laughed again. “Well said, Miss Wang.” He took another sip from his wineglass before moving away to speak to another businessman. She watched him go, swallowing a few more times to get the sour taste out of the back of her throat.

_Well, I can’t say I enjoyed that conversation, but at least I got enough of a voice sample out of it. Now, once I find the password, the voice scanner should be a piece of cake._

Nozomi eyed the security room down the hallway, quickly checking the scanner on her omnitool for confirmation. The electromagnetic field that she was picking up from the wiring seemed to lead her into the security room; she supposed it made sense—whoever was crazy enough to rob Goto would have to get into the small room to even have a chance at disabling the kinetic barrier.

She glanced around underneath dark bangs: no one seemed to be paying attention to her. Goto was entertaining a few guests in the other corner of the ballroom, and everyone else was either occupied by a discussion, drunk, or both.

Quickly, she hacked the locked door and Nozomi grinned to herself when it slid open soundlessly. She palmed it as it shut behind her just to be sure that no one could follow her easily.

The short hallway beyond the door led to another door with a lock. Before she walked up to it though, Nozomi felt the inside of her handbag, digging up the false bottom underneath the handgun and finding the item that she had stowed there a few days earlier. While she had no reservations about using the pistol if she absolutely had to, she preferred leaving behind as little incriminating evidence as possible: dead bodies went a long way in identifying criminals.

Pulling out the tiny packet from her bag, she slipped it underneath the crack under the door, burying the lower half of her face in the mask that she had brought with her.

She counted to sixty—just in case. Rin had warned her that the longer acting version of the drug sometimes took a little more time to take effect, but Nozomi had never known the younger woman to actually provide her with something dysfunctional.

True to her word, when she hacked the door open fifty-nine seconds later, the single security guard was sitting prone at his desk. She almost had to laugh at the action movie blaring from the computer screen behind him; he hadn’t even been watching the security feed on the wall projector behind him.

Quickly walking over to the security console, the corner of her mouth twitched into a smile when she discovered that Goto hadn’t been quite as thorough with his home security as he really ought to have been. Yes, she had been recorded in the ballroom and the garden, but as far as the police would be aware the next morning, she had just been another partygoer who was innocently unaware of the theft going on underneath Goto’s nose.

As for surveillance feeds for the room she was currently standing in and the vault itself, there was a conspicuous lack of them. The feed for the camera outside his vault was currently showing up as a blank, presumably because she had conveniently disabled it earlier by fiddling with the motion sensor, and doubtlessly, Goto had assumed that nobody would be able to actually break into his security room or the vault itself without being noticed.

It was almost too easy—she wouldn’t even have to ask Umi to edit her out of any logs.

For good measure, she disabled the cameras to the vault anyways, just in case there was something hidden in the vault itself that she was unaware of. By the time Security Chief Ishida woke up, it would be far too late for him to do anything about it other than admitting to his boss he had somehow managed to fall asleep on his shift.

On the desk next to the unconscious guard was another datapad, and Nozomi picked it up to read it:

_\--Ishida:_

_I have the same problem. There’re too many passwords around here and it’s way too hard to keep them all straight. The password for tonight is *NEZUMI KOZO* -- it’s not even that easy to remember, but I guess it’s useless to everyone except Goto because of the voice scanner anyways._

_Want to call it quits together after tonight? Working for Goto is far too stressful for my own good._

Setting the datapad down exactly where she’d found it, Nozomi allowed herself a brief second to appreciate the choice of password.

_Nezumi Kozo. Nice. That’s the name of the legendary thief in Japanese history. How very fitting._

Using Ishida’s access card, she disabled the kinetic barrier on the outside of the vault before replacing it in his pocket. Slipping out of the room and closing the door behind her, she snagged the packet from the carpeted floor before she left it behind and stuffed it back into her purse disguised as a pack of tissues.

Nozomi pulled the mask off of her face just before she rejoined the party. Careful to keep her expression as neutral as possible, she chatted for a few minutes with a clearly inebriated businessman before making her way outside again.

Quickly, she tapped a few commands on her omnitool, combining the password that she had just obtained with the voice sample that she’d gotten from Goto earlier. She made sure she was out of earshot before she tapped the word “play”, grinning when Goto’s thin, reedy voice issued out of her omnitool.

_Now, if that doesn’t fool the voice scanner, I don’t know what will._

When the coast was relatively clear, she descended the steps to the vault again, suppressing the smile on her face when she saw that the kinetic barrier was down. She approached the microphone that had been set up in the corner.

A robotic, feminine voice issued out of the device when she tapped it once with a gloved finger. “ _Password required.”_

She pressed play on the screen of her omnitool again. _“Nezumi Kozo,”_ her omnitool repeated in Goto's voice.

 _“Voice ID accepted,_ ” the microphone replied. _“Welcome, Mr. Goto.”_

The door slid open.

Her heart pounding, Nozomi darted into the spacious vault before it could close behind her.

She couldn’t suppress the gasp that escaped her lips when she looked around, star-struck for the first few heartbeats in the underground room.

Expensive paintings and jewelry lined one corner of the vault, while a long row of filing cabinets filled up the rest of the room. If she had more time, Nozomi would’ve loved to look through each and every one of them—and possibly pocket a trinket or two on her way out—but with a sigh, she remembered her original goal tonight.

In a display case whose lock she easily picked, she found the disc in question. She wouldn’t even have to take it with her—all she had to do was to copy its contents into her omnitool before replacing it where’d found it... along with a little something else from her purse that the guards had also conveniently missed.

Sometimes, she couldn't help herself.

Nozomi cast one last regretful glance at the vault before she shut the door behind her, making her way back to the party, and slipping easily back into the crowd. She snagged a pastry from a passing waiter before sitting down at the edge of the outdoor fountain to speak with a businessman who had flagged her down. She kept the conversation light and casual, but in reality, she had her eye on the time and the door that led back into Goto’s mansion.

It would be far too suspicious if she were to leave early, of course, no matter how much she relished the thought of finally releasing Goto’s files to the public. Nozomi reminded herself that she just had to be patient for a little while longer—all she had to do now was wait for the party to be over and for her to be safely on her way home before she uploaded the information that she’d just gotten. Luckily for him, Goto would be none the wiser—until his entire world came crashing down around him, of course.

She hid a smile behind a gloved hand at the prospect as she picked up another glass of water, savouring its cool, lemony taste over her lips. She glanced at her watch, giving herself another half an hour or so before she had to bid Goto a good night.

She sincerely hoped he would have one, given the weight of the information currently stored in her omnitool at the moment. And if he didn’t? _Oh well. Not my problem._

When she finally made her way back to the entrance hall, the man in question was standing near the front doors to his mansion, stopping each guest to speak to him or her for a minute or two before they left. Beyond the throng of people gathered in the front driveway, Nozomi could spot Rin’s sedan waiting outside the gates.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself tonight, Miss Wang?” Goto asked her as she passed by him.

She offered him a smile—genuine enough as she raised her right hand in a gesture of farewell. “Oh yes,” Nozomi replied lightly, deliberately catching and holding his gaze, “it certainly was illuminating to meet so many likeminded individuals in Japan.”

Goto returned the smile, the expression on his end thin and calculating. “Ah yes. I’m glad you had a pleasant time, in that case. I look forward to doing business with you in the future.”

She said nothing, but let her smile widen as she descended the steps onto the drive that led to the front gate, keeping her stride casual but purposeful.

It wasn’t until she collapsed back into the passenger seat of Rin’s car did she let out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.

 _Damn_ , she chided herself. _I’m getting old._

“Well?” Rin demanded as she stepped on the gas. “Did nya get it?”

Nozomi waited until they were a few blocks away; flipping up the display of her omnitool, she chuckled softly as she waited for the upload to finish. “Please,” she admonished. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

Rin laughed. “Good. Because now you can spend the rest of the evening assuring Umi that nothing went wrong.”

Nozomi groaned, peeling off her gloves and tossing them behind her into the backseat. “You know,” she said, “I would almost rather rob Goto’s mansion again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we can't have a heist without the morning-after clean-up crew, can we? Morning, Eli. Hope you enjoyed your week and a half off. 
> 
> Also, sadly, the fun and games can't last forever. :^) I'll just leave things at that.


	5. Third Time's the Charm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Evening (I guess early morning? It's 12:29 am where I live right now, haha) fam.
> 
> First off, I'm sorry this chapter is a little bit late. Long story short, I ran into some storyline difficulties regarding the plot of this fic and I just... didn't feel inspired to write out this chapter until I figured out exactly how this was going to proceed. (The good news is I'm fairly sure I've figured it out now, after changing around some plot points and so forth, so yay me.)
> 
> Anyways, rant aside, I'm pretty excited to put this chapter out there because remember how I mentioned the fun and games can't last forever? We're not quite diving off the deep end yet, but we're getting there.

Eli held up the photograph of the tarot card to the store owner. “So, do you know _anywhere_ that would sell anything like this?”

The owner of the small shop next to the local shrine squinted at the photo through his wire-rimmed glasses. “Not that I’m aware of, sorry about that. The designs of the cards themselves aren’t anything special, but I don’t think I’ve seen that backing anywhere. Maybe they’re custom printed? I can show you our selection of tarot cards if you’re interested, though.”

“No, that’s okay,” she told him politely, stowing the picture back into her pocket. “But thanks for your time.”

Eli walked out of the store with her hands in the pockets of her jacket, thinking hard. This was the third store that she had visited this week, and none of their owners had any idea where the tarot cards that were currently sitting in a locked drawer in her office desk had come from. She was beginning to suspect that the latest store owner was right: that the cards had been custom printed somewhere. _That_ did not help her case in any way, but it was better for her to come to that conclusion sooner rather than later... before she wasted more time trying to follow an impossible lead.

She had been about to pull out her phone to double-check the location of the last store that she wanted to check when it rang unexpectedly. She reached into her pocket to pull it out.

“Hello?”

“Ayase.” The voice of her superior issued out of the speakers, unnaturally rushed as though he was in a hurry to find her. “Where are you?”

“Investigating those tarot cards, sir,” she reported. “Has something happened?”

“Yes,” Okuda told her matter-of-factly. “There was another theft last night.”

“ _What_?” She couldn’t quite help the exclamation as an older man in a business suit passing by her looked at her curiously. “Is it the same person?” she asked, lowering her voice and partially covering her mouth with her other hand.

“It appears so,” the executor replied. “I just got the preliminary report from the officers who were called in to the scene. The victim this time is a businessman named Goto Akira, but I don’t have many more details than that. You should head on over to the crime scene and see for yourself. Call me with a report when you’re done.”

“Understood, sir.”

Hanging up, Eli gripped her cellphone tightly as she began the brisk walk back to the nearest train station, her mind already sprinting at a hundred miles an hour.

* * *

Nozomi reached over the neat piles of plates in Umi’s kitchen and helped herself to several spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee mug before making her way over to the small living room and settling down on the worn couch.

The blue-haired owner of the apartment eyed her wearily as she sat back with the mug in one hand. “Are you not the _least_ bit concerned about last night?” she demanded.

“Nope,” Nozomi replied brightly, savouring the muted bitter taste of the hot liquid. “This is good coffee though, Umi-chan. Where’d you get it?”

Umi’s gaze followed her intently, her amber eyes burning and serious—as it usually was when she was worked up and anxious. “I’m serious, Nozomi. What if one of the investigators called to Goto’s mansion looks though all the surveillance feed?”

“So?” she asked non-chalantly, setting the cup back on the coffee table with a small _clink._ “Like I told you last night, even if they were to _possibly_ suspect me based on a few minutes of video feed of me attending a party, do you really think that anyone would be able to put a name to my face?”

“ _That_ is not the point,” Umi retorted. “Listen, Nozomi—you might not know this, but Rin was listening in on one of the official channels last night while we were waiting for you. Apparently the police department put someone else in charge of the case you’ve got building against you.”

She raised a dark eyebrow at Umi. “Oh? Really now,” she said, her tone half-amused as she watched Umi look through the papers on her desk. “Do tell me who this is and how they think that reassigning this case is going to get them any closer to the truth.”

Pulling one out, the blue-haired woman scanned it quickly. “Rin didn’t manage to hear the details, but whoever this is, they’re young. They’ve only been in the force for a few years, but they’ve had twelve cases so far.” She paused for a moment—Nozomi wasn’t quite sure whether this was for effect or because she didn’t want to believe it herself—before she continued. “Twelve convictions.”

A wide smile twitched at the corner of her lips. “Well well well, it looks like the police have finally managed to find someone _competent_ to do their investigations. It’s a little bit of a shame that they’re investigating the wrong person, don’t you think, Umi-chan?”

Umi glared at her. “That isn’t the point either. The point is, whoever is investigating this case now is actually good at their job. If they’re as good as their record says, do you not think you should be a little more careful?”

Nozomi chuckled as she raised the mug to her lips again, taking a long sip of her coffee before straightening a little. “We’ll just have to see now, won’t we?” she asked, amusement shaping her words as she reached for one of the cushions on the other end of the couch, tossing a grin over in Umi’s direction. “This isn’t just about being good at their job; if they want _any_ chance of even catching a glimpse of me, they’ll have to be more than just _good_ —they’ll have to be better than me. Do you honestly believe that’s the case here, Umi-chan? If you do, I must say you have a disturbing lack of faith in my talents.”

With that, she settled the cushion under her head against the backing of the couch—she felt a nap coming on.

* * *

_—Two weeks later—_

Balanced on the rooftop of a singular townhouse in one of Tokyo’s suburbs, Nozomi opened the communication line of her earpiece to Umi. “You’re _sure_ that this is the right place?” she asked as soon as the blue-haired woman was connected to the call.

“Yes,” Umi replied, rather testily. “Unless you’re trying to imply that Rin’s information isn’t correct.” In the background, Nozomi could hear an outraged sputter from orange-haired young woman in question before Umi made a loud shushing noise.

“I never said that,” she quipped conversationally. “Just seems oddly quiet out here, that’s all.”

“ _You_ are sure that no one saw you on your way in?” Umi fired the question back, her tone much more accusatory than hers had been.

“Of course not,” Nozomi answered. “This is a residence, Umi, not airport security. There weren’t even any security cameras in the lobby. All I had to do was use the keycard you so graciously provided me and here I am. You know, technically, I’m not even trespassing right now.”

She glanced around. It was not quite dark yet, but the streets below the courtyard were already brightly lit by the dim glow of streetlights and she could hear the soft hum of insects in the early summer evening. Apart from her, however, the rooftop garden was deserted. She smirked. “Maybe Tsumugiya really thinks he’s safe by hiding all his contracts here instead of at the hotel he’s staying at.”

“Don’t get complacent,” Umi told her. “For all you know, he could have been anticipating that he will be targeted and is luring you in.”

Nozomi snorted as she stepped lightly across the grass, the heels of her boots making almost no sound as she made her way to the elevator. “Umi-chan, please. I’m going in now, so send me that slicer code.”

Using the keycard Umi had given her again, she opened up the access logs to the elevator, looking through it briefly. Once a week, a cleaning service had entered their code. Twice over the months, a name she recognized as the landlord for the property… and then, ten days ago, access by Tsumugiya Haruma himself.

She smiled, the corners of her lips twitching up in amusement. _I guess Rin was right after all._

Her omnitool chimed once, signalling the arrival of the code Umi had promised her. She typed it into the elevator access, the code mimicking Tsumugiya’s combination before she hacked into the elevator’s controls, causing the door to the shaft to open but not calling the car itself.

She removed a small gripper from her belt and clipped it to the lift cable, hopping into the shaft with ease. It would only be a two-storey drop at most—hardly anything fatal—but sadly, she had a decibel maximum to work with.

Nozomi landed on the roof of the elevator car almost soundlessly as she unclipped herself from the elevator cable. It was almost completely dark in the enclosed space, but she was grateful for it, rather than intimidated. Darkness meant that most video cameras couldn’t record her.

Getting down on her knees, she felt the walls around her until she found what she was looking for: the grate to the apartment’s ventilation shaft. Her gloved fingers tightened around the grooves of the grate opening.

This was the part of the plan that relied on luck: if the grates were nailed or screwed in by any means other than conventionally, she would have to hope that her omnitool had enough functions to get through it, or else she would have to pack up and try again another night.

However, as things were, the grate opening came off the wall easily in her hands with some force as Nozomi carefully set it aside and began to crawl.

The first opening down into the foyer was only a few feet away from her, as Nozomi peeked through the opening, suppressing a silent snort as she took in the interior of the apartment. As she would’ve expected of a rich businessman who made his money off of exploiting poorer workers in foreign countries, the central living space was occupied with more furniture than she would ever know what to do with.

A single security guard stood at his post beside the elevator door—a jolt ran through her skin when she realized that he was wearing a face mask covering his nose and mouth.

It only took Nozomi a moment to figure out what was going on, and she cursed internally, biting down on her bottom lip to stop herself from enunciating the syllables out loud. Clearly, the investigator who had been assigned to her case was smarter than she had originally given them credit for. _They’ve realized—or at least suspect—how I’m getting by all these security guards._

If Umi could see the situation in front of her, she knew that the blue-haired woman would’ve insisted on her turning around and leaving before she did something to give herself away. Nozomi could almost imagine her tirade in her head.

_But… that kind of feels like a waste of an evening, doesn’t it?_

Her original plan had been to drop the sedative from the grate she was crouched by at the moment and drop down into the apartment from there, but that plan had been put to a jarring halt by her most recent observation—clearly, she would need to do some improvising. 

_Either way, first things first._

Flicking her hood over her head, she tied her own mask into place before she edged down the ventilation shaft, careful to keep the noise to an absolute minimum. It was probably inevitable at some point that she was going to get caught on film, but that was a risk she was willing to take.

Nozomi turned on her omnitool, careful to keep the dim orange glow of its interface away from the openings of the ventilation shaft in case one of the guards was looking up through the dark apartment. She set it to scan for electrical devices in the area, studying it carefully when it located one about a dozen feet away to her right.

She peeked around the corner of the shaft when she drew close to it. In the dim lighting provided by the omnitool on her left wrist, she realized it was a motion sensor.

_What a clever bunch they are._

It was obvious that the investigator after her hadn’t missed a detail back at the hotel as she stared down the narrow, cramped space of the ventilation shaft at the offending motion sensor. _They must’ve figured out that I somehow used the vents to get in and out._ A small prickle of irritation ignited underneath her skin as she squinted at the device in the poor lighting—just who _was_ this investigator? _And who do they think they are?_

Well, she could deal them later. Brushing aside her annoyance, she focussed her attention on the task at hand.

It appeared that the motion sensor was fixed on the grate itself and it was currently surveying the wall opposite to her approach. Inching closer, careful not to make any sudden movements that could jostle it, Nozomi carefully stretched out her right arm to turn its sensor so that it was surveying the floor of the ventilation shaft beneath her.

With the area around the opening now safe, she peered through the grate.

The room below her appeared to be an office of some sort—there was a single security guard facing the closed door with his back towards her. The rest of the room was occupied by a singular filing cabinet, surrounded by several packed cardboard boxes. In the moonlight that filtered through the large window, she could see that they were filled with files and bound envelopes.

Despite the precarious situation she was currently in, Nozomi almost laughed. The rich really made it too easy for her to steal from them: getting her hands on just one of the files was probably enough to make several arrests.

 _The only problem is…_ She surveyed the back of the singular security guard, who shifted his position in the room every few minutes or so.

 _Well, it can’t be helped, I suppose._ Resorting to violence was, well, one of her last resorts, but it looked like she didn’t have a choice today.

Gently, Nozomi carefully prised the grate covering away from the bottom of the ventilation shaft and waited until the man’s back was to her again before dropping down from the ceiling, landing almost silently on her feet.

Within three paces, she covered the distance between herself and the unsuspecting security guard. One quick strike to the back of his neck later, the man pitched forward on his knees. She caught him before he hit the floor with a _thump_ that would no doubt alert his colleagues outside, lowering him to the floor and arranging his limbs to look as though he’d fallen asleep on the job.

Glancing around, she picked the lock to the filing cabinet in a similar amount of time. A large manila envelope had been placed on top of the neat row of leather-bound books. The corner of her mouth quirked upwards in a smile as Nozomi slid it under her arm.

Closing the cabinet door behind her, she looked through her pockets, finding the deck of cards she was looking for. Fanning them out in one hand, she selected the one she wanted, feeling the familiar sense of triumph rising in her chest at its meaning, knowing that she was addressing this particular card to the investigator who had made her night harder than it really needed to be.

She left _the Fool_ lying face up on the desk before she used it as leverage to climb back into the ventilation shaft.

* * *

Nozomi peeled her gloves off her hands as she dropped the large, padded envelope addressed to one of the local news stations that contained the manila envelope off in a postage box.

She grinned in anticipation of the aftermath that was sure to follow, though her usual sense of satisfaction was dampened slightly by the fact that the investigator on her tail was forcing her to change her usual style of doing things. She would have to come up with more creative ways to do things in the future—not that the investigator in question was _remotely_ close to catching her at the moment.

She smirked to herself. _You’ve got a long way to go if you want to catch_ me _._

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and Nozomi frowned slightly as she pulled it out to look at the caller ID on its display—it was Umi, and Umi never called her on her _cellphone_ unless it was for a very good reason… or if she was angry that Nozomi hadn’t reported back to her after completing her evening’s adventure.

For a moment, she contemplated letting it ring so that she could find herself a late-night congratulatory snack to help her sleep, before the better part of her conscience caught up to her. With a sigh, she raised the receiver to her ear. “Good evening, Umi-chan. You know, the fact that I’m picking up your call is a _good_ thing.”

“Nozomi, it's started.” The blue-haired woman’s tone was distressed and urgent, completely ignoring what she had said.

For the second time that night—two times too many for her liking on any other day—she was startled into silence. It took her a moment or two to process to what Umi was saying to her.

“You’re sure about this, Umi?” she demanded, dropping the pet name for her blue-haired friend in heat of the moment.

“Get back here _now_ ,” Umi instructed her, not even bothering to answer the question. “Rin’s trying to tap into their communications to see if we can find out more.”

Abandoning the thoughts of a late night parfait and the bed waiting for her back home, Nozomi spun around to head back in the direction of Umi’s apartment. “On my way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sadly, I have a large assignment due this weekend and two midterms to write next week, so the next installment of this fic will have to wait until after that. D:
> 
> But I _can_ say I'm super excited for it for several reasons - one of them may or may not be the fact that... uh, fates are about to collide. :')
> 
> Anyways, I also just want to thank everyone again for their support for this fic. It really means a lot to me and they make my day that much better, especially when I hear that people are enjoying what I write. So thanks again! ^^


	6. Rendezvous

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, now that midterms are over and done with, I've returned with the next installment of this fic. I'm actually pretty excited to put this one out here because I (personally) have been looking forward to this since Chapter 1, but y'know, I'll let the chapter do the talking. :')
> 
> That being said I hope that this chapter makes sense to everyone. I'm basing a lot of the technicalities on what I know of Japan, but seeing as I don't live there, I might've gotten a few details wrong here or there. (Also, someone let me know please if I make _zero_ sense this chapter - I jump around a little bit so I hope it's not too confusing! D:)
> 
> I also want to thank everyone for the views/comments/kudos! ;___; They kept me going through midterm week and I'm actually really excited to see what everyone thinks of this chapter. Thank you again! 
> 
> Enjoy!

— _A few hours earlier_ —

Eli sat stubbornly at her desk with piles of manila envelopes around her and her OSD plugged into her computer. She rubbed her eyes tiredly—she had spent the majority of the afternoon painstakingly comparing security feed from the hotel to the tapes that the officers at Goto’s mansion had given her and the surveillance footage from Tsumugiya’s residence.

Unfortunately for her, the tapes were too indistinct for her to say with any degree of confidence that the same person had been at all three places on each of the nights. _Not to mention the very real possibility that they were in disguise on more than one of these occasions._

Frustrated with herself and her inability to put together the pieces on her desk in front of her, she returned to the list of absolutes that she had drawn up.

First, the thief had access to resources that were beyond her capability to emulate in a short amount of time. There was no other answer for the timely blackout at the hotel and the way that the security system at Goto’s mansion had only registered his profile entering and exiting his vault.

The access logs from Tsumugiya’s townhouse had only served to confirm her suspicions when she had arrived on the scene the morning after it had been broken into. _Even though I told Okuda to send out the agenda about the personal protective equipment, it wasn’t enough._

_I was right, but that didn’t stop them._

Second, the thief had an agenda. It was a fact that she hadn’t been sure of before investigating Tsumugiya’s residence, but now, Eli was sure that each theft was not the product of an evening whim or even a crime of opportunity. The painting, the blueprints, and even the case files maybe, _maybe_ she could have seen as unplanned heists because the thief happened to be in the area. _But to leave Goto’s information behind just to upload it onto the internet after you left, and to mail the envelope you_ just _stole from a location that was never disclosed to the authorities to the local news?  Who would take that kind of risk unless it was to expose these people specifically?_

And third, she was positive that whoever this thief was, they were a product of the same sort of circumstances that had landed her as the sole guardian of her younger sister at the age of nineteen. _The tarot cards. Their choice of targets._ She was almost absolutely certain that this thief was yet another hopeful vigilante that wanted to expose some of the corruption that inevitably ran underneath Tokyo that popped up once every few years—it was just that this thief had the skills to back up the statement they wanted to make.

 _But why now? What message are you trying to get across?_ The backs of the five tarot cards in an evidence bag twinkled innocently under the bright illumination from the lights overhead, almost as though they were taunting her. The face of _the Fool_ stared back at her, sending a prickle of annoyed frustration crawling underneath the surface of her skin like an unwanted salamander.

_You knew I was going to find that card, and you left it there for me specifically. Are you trying to tell me that there’s no way I’ll be able to figure out who you are? Is that what you’re trying to say with that card?_

The thought aggravated her already-frayed nerves as she glared back at the whimsical expression of the man painted onto the surface of the card.

 _I_ will _find you._

With that resolve in mind, Eli turned her attention back to her laptop with an aggravated sigh; she had yet to finish her report for Okuda and if she wanted to get an early start on visiting the chemical laboratory that Maki had referred her to in the morning, it needed to be completed before she left.

Her cellphone rang, distracting her from her computer screen as she fished it out of her pocket. Eli winced when she saw who the caller was.

“Are you still at work?” her sister demanded as soon as she picked up.

She glanced up at the time before responding. “Yes.”

Eli could hear the rumble of a sigh even through her phone’s speakers. “Don’t you think you work too much?” Alisa asked her. “I mean, have you even left your apartment for something other than work in the last few weeks?”

She was about to respond when the phone on her desk rang, its ringtone shrill and insistent. By the sound of the crackle over the other end of the line, Alisa had heard it too.

“Alisa,” she said, “I really need to go. Can we call later?”

“Alright,” her sister grumbled. “But _you_ are _not_ going to be working overtime this weekend so I can come over and see you for once, okay?”

“Okay,” Eli promised her quickly before hanging up and diving for the phone on her desk. “Hello?”

“Ayase.” The voice of her superior in question issued over the plastic speakers. “Are you still in the building?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied promptly.

She heard another—all too familiar—sigh issue over the other end of the line. “Go home,” Okuda told her.

“But—”

The executor interrupted her mid-sentence. “Ayase, you’re not going to solve this case by sitting in front of your desk all night. One of these days, your sister is going to come up to this station and accuse me of overworking you. If and when that happens, you can rest assured that I will be denying any and all of those allegations.”

Eli choked back a startled laugh at the older man’s words, glancing up at the time again. “Alright,” she finally agreed, resisting the temptation to rub her eyes again.

“Good,” Okuda told her before he hung up.

Shutting off the lights to her office after turning off her computer, she smiled wryly to herself as she passed the stairs that led downstairs to the M.E.’s office. Judging by the indistinct voices that drifted up from the stairway, she wasn’t going to be the only one who was going to be receiving a call from the executor—she just hoped that Okuda would have better luck breaking up that particular argument than she usually did.

* * *

Eli was halfway through her walk home from the train station when she realized that she had promised her sister that she would see her this weekend. She swore in her head when she remembered that her fridge was nearly empty—a fact that her sister was certainly going to berate her for when she saw her this weekend; this meant a trip to the store, and it was probably a good idea to get it done tonight while she still had it on her mind.

Fortunately for her, it was still early enough that most of the grocery stores in her area were still open, and she decided to pick up a microwave dinner for herself while she was at it: it would save her the time she needed to cook so that she could spend some more time with her personal case files before calling it a night.

Bags of groceries in hand, her mind still pre-occupied by thoughts of what she wanted to double-check that evening after she’d eaten, Eli didn’t notice until it was almost too late that she had nearly run into someone outside a local café.

“I’m sorry,” she started, quickly collecting herself, “I didn’t mean to—”

She stopped, because the person she had almost walked into had held out a hand to steady her. “Oh, that’s okay,” the other woman told her lightly, the corner of her mouth twitching into a mischievous smile. “I can tell you’re busy.”

Eli paused to stare at her, the odd yet accurate observation somehow rubbing her the wrong way slightly. _Was I that obvious?_

When she took a closer look, however, she realized that the woman standing less than a foot away from her was even odder than the observation than she had made. Despite looking close to Eli’s own age, she had her dark hair tied back into twintails and she was holding a half-eaten parfait in her other hand.

“Don’t worry,” the other woman continued, “working late is never fun—I know that for a fact.”

Perhaps she had been with the police for too long, but there was something about her tone of voice that told her the words were slightly more weighted than she was letting on; however, Eli couldn’t quite place her finger on what it was.

“Still,” she began, trying again, “I should’ve been watching where I was going.”

The smile on the other woman’s face just widened by the slightest margin as she raised her free hand to give her a wave. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s not a problem. You should get going if you’re busy, though,” she quipped conversationally, turning her attention back to the dessert in her hand.

Unsure of what to say—unsure if there _was_ even an appropriate response to that statement—Eli readjusted her grip on her bags before turning away, shaking her blonde bangs out of her eyes.

 _What was_ that _about?_

When she reached the front door to her apartment, she put the strange encounter behind her as she stowed her groceries away in the fridge before turning her attention to the stack of papers and manila folders on her desk in the living room—she had more important things vying for her attention at the moment.

* * *

The sound of a phone—her phone—ringing startled Eli awake. Eyes still firmly shut, she groped in the darkness around her pillows before her fingers closed over the offending object. Blearily opening her eyes, she squinted at the bright display of the screen. The time read 0413, but that wasn’t what concerned her at the moment: the incoming call was from none other than her superior.

She placed the device to her ear. “Ayase speaking.”

The executor didn’t bother with preamble. “Ayase, there’s been a situation at City Hall. I need you down here _now._ ” There was a sense of urgency in his tone that she’d heard on very rare occasions.

“Okay,” she mumbled, still trying to shake off the last vestiges of sleep, pushing messy locks of blonde hair out of her face. “I’ll be there in thirty.”

By the time Eli made it to City Hall, dodging through a cluster of far too many police cars and yards of yellow tape around the block, the sun was already peeking over the horizon. It didn’t take her long to locate Okuda, who was standing on the lawn in front of the government building next to the curb. He looked up as she approached.

“What happened?” Eli said as soon as she was within earshot.

Okuda’s expression was distressed as he swept his gaze over the mess of activity in front of him. “An unidentified man broke into public records last night and copied a substantial amount of data from the servers there,” he told her tersely. “Security gave chase, of course, but I’m still waiting on a report back about that.”

Eli furrowed her eyebrows, thinking. “But… What kind of data are we talking about, sir?” she asked.

Okuda fixed her with an intense, dark gaze. It was few seconds before he spoke. “Sensitive data, Ayase. Data the public should not have their hands on. This breach of security is extremely concerning, and it’s got the city council running scared. They’re demanding a high-profile investigation, and I’m afraid it’s going to have to be you.”

Eli stared at him, unsure if she had heard right. A _second_ reassignment in as many months? _Just_ when she had finally made some headway into her current case—not to mention the very obvious message the thief had left specifically for her at the site of their last theft. _I_ know _that this has become personal, and he wants me to just_ drop _everything?_

“But—”

Okuda cut off her skeptical protest before it could even make its way out of her mouth. “Do you understand the significance of this crime, Ayase?” he asked her. “This is a breach of security that could allow these criminals to target anyone they want in this city with the data they’ve stolen from public records. Do you honestly think the city council cares about theft at this point in time? Why do you think the entire precinct is here? We’re talking national security that could potentially be compromised if this is left uninvestigated! I’m reassigning you to this case because I have no one better and I expect you to perform it with the same amount of diligence that I’ve come to expect from you! Do I make myself clear?”

Eli held her ground for a few more moments, meeting the frustration and flint in her superior’s narrowed eyes before a sigh tore itself away from the back of her throat. “Yes, sir,” she finally said through gritted teeth, her hands unconsciously balling into fists at her side.

The executor glared back at her for a few heartbeats, knowing her anger wasn’t quite spent. “Good,” he ground out after a few moments of terse silence between them. “I’ll—” The rest of his sentence was interrupted by the sound of his pager beeping. “Hello?”

She watched him listen to the report from the other end of the line before he cursed under his breath. “Alright,” he growled to the caller after a few moments. Hanging up, he glanced up at her. “That was the pursuit squad. They lost him, but they reported that they’ve got a few things you might want to take a look at.”

Inhaling through her nose the bitter scent of car exhaust mixed in with the typical smells of early-morning Tokyo, Eli stood still for a few more moments, gathering her frayed thoughts and emotions before she moved, stiffly at first, then with purpose.

* * *

Eli crossed her arms over her chest as she stared down the officer standing opposite to her. “So, you lost him here?” she clarified.

The man pushed his gloved fingers up his face and through his messy hair. “Yeah. He was on a motorcycle and turned down this alley.” He swept his arm around them in order to indicate their surroundings. “It’s too narrow for a cruiser to fit down easily, so by the time we reached where we saw him turn on foot, he was gone.” He led her over to where skid marks in the pavement decorated the alleyway, along with several bloodstains that littered the edge of the sidewalk.

“What are those from?” she asked him as they ducked underneath the police tape surrounding the little scene.

“We saw him passing something to a bystander,” the officer told her, “so my partner opened fire. Not enough to incapacitate either him or the woman he gave his package to, unfortunately, but maybe you can get an ID out of this?”

Eli bent over the droplets of blood on the sidewalk, noticing how the bloodstains were already dried in the late-spring heat before she pulled her phone out of her pocket. “We'll have to hope so,” she replied as she dialed a specific number.

* * *

Sitting in a chair next to Maki’s computer, Eli accepted the cup of coffee from her assistant before she raised it to her lips, recoiling slightly at the taste. For some reason, Yazawa had seen it fit to put several ice cubes in the warm drink, but she resisted the temptation to comment.

“Well?” she asked the redhead sitting beside her. “What do you have?”

“Give me a second,” Maki snapped back. “Blood tests don’t magically complete themselves just because you’re in a hurry.”

Eli frowned, but reigned in the equally snappish retort that threatened to make its way past her lips. Anxious, restless energy tingled underneath her skin despite the fact that she had probably gotten a grand total of about four hours of sleep the night before.

 _Why me?_ That particular piece of injustice had rattled at the back of her mind all morning like an unwanted neon signpost, waiting to be addressed the moment she had a tiny bit of time to herself. _Why did he have to reassign_ me _?_

Deep down, Eli knew the answer, and for the first time in her career, she hated herself for it. _It’s because I was too goddamn good at what I did. I didn’t give him a choice other than to pick me. Damn it._ A part of her knew she should have been grateful that Okuda valued her enough to pick her on the spot for the case at hand, but all she could really feel at the moment was sparking annoyance that she would not have the satisfaction of arresting the thief that had eluded her for the better part of three months.

 _Damn it._ She knew she was too old to be feeling this particular brand of pettiness, but she couldn’t help herself. _Maybe if I have time to investigate on my own…_

Eli was distracted from her thoughts by the beeping of the machine beside Maki’s desk as the redhead reached over her for the piece of paper being printed out.

“Well?” she demanded, watching the medical examiner read it over, suppressing the temptation to take it from her.

“Nothing,” Maki told her. “The blood sample we got isn’t in the city’s database. Look for yourself.” She shoved the piece of paper at her.

Eli took it and read it over obediently, but Maki had never given her an indication not to believe her and her statement today was no different.

“Now what?” the redhead asked her after a few moments of silence, sitting back down and crossing her arms over her chest expectantly.

Eli ignored her, resting her chin on the back of her hand as she thought. “What about any relatives?” she asked finally. “Anything that’s even a remote match to this as far as the medical records go?”

Maki took the piece of paper back from her as she retyped some commands into her computer. “That’s kind of a long shot,” she muttered, half under her breath, “but we’ll see, I suppose.”

The tense minutes passed by in silence as the program ran. In an attempt to contain her impatience, Eli watched Maki’s assistant flit about her small office, doing the filing. Occasionally Yazawa would cast a furtive glance back at the two of them before returning to her task; no doubt she had interrupted whatever plans the pair had had for the morning—judging by the vials and medical equipment laid out on one of the gurneys, it was another autopsy.

Suddenly, Maki’s hand closed over her elbow. “Eli,” she hissed, pointing a free finger at the screen. “Look at this.”

Swiveling her head around, she followed the tip of Maki’s finger on the computer screen. “Tell me what I’m looking at.”

“I searched by DNA profiling, like you asked. Someone with a roughly fifty-five percent DNA match with the sample you scraped off the pavement checked into a clinic this morning.”

_Fifty-five percent? That means—_

“What clinic is this?” she demanded.

Maki highlighted the address on the screen underneath the name before turning to her. “Only siblings generally share about half their DNA with each other. There _is_ a chance that they could be first cousins, but the chances that the two people we’re looking at are family are virtually a hundred percent. It _could_ be a coincidence, but _—_ ”

Eli jabbed the _print_ button on the printer next to Maki’s computer and snatched up the hard copy as soon as it was finished. “I’ll take those odds.”

* * *

Nozomi sat sandwiched between Rin and Umi as the latter scanned through her multitude of computer screens, occasionally fiddling with her omnitool as she sorted through the morning news.

“So what’s the damage?” she asked, sipping from her morning tea, wincing a little at the taste. It could do with a little more sugar, but now probably wasn’t a good time to fix her usual morning beverage.

“They got their hands on the data they wanted last night,” Umi told her tersely, gaze still fixated on her computers, “but not before the police gave chase. It looks like they passed it onto someone else who is part of the organization in order to evade police pursuit.”

Nozomi took another drink from her mug. “Do we know who this other member is?”

Umi consulted her screens again. “No, not by name, though it seems like she’s been in contact with them since she was given the data,” she answered after a few minutes. “It doesn’t look to me like this hand-off was planned—there is far too much radio chatter from them for this to be a smooth operation so far. It might be some time before the data makes its way into the hands of the people it was intended to go to.”

Pulling her dark hair into a ponytail, Nozomi stood up, snapping the elastic into place. “Then we’d better make sure that doesn’t happen, don’t we? Rin, what’s the police situation look like?”

“They pulled the entire police force to City Hall this morning,” Rin reported promptly, discarding her orange cat-shaped pillow as she browsed through the display of her omnitool. “They’re probably already on the investigation, but it’s the police, nya know?” She shrugged. “Their comm logs this morning did indicate that they have someone on the case, but we all know what the police are like.” The orange-haired young woman wrinkled her nose at the last words in a clear manner of disgust.

Umi laid a hand on her shoulder. “Nozomi, the police are already involved. Are you sure you want to go _right now_?”

She turned, meeting the blue-haired woman’s serious amber gaze with a green one of her own. “Umi, you know as well as I do that we’ve never trusted the police with this kind of stuff. Even if they have an investigator on this case, and _even if_ this investigator is good at what they’re supposed to be doing, they don’t have access to the kind of resources we do. _We know_ where this woman is hiding right now and _we know_ she has the data.”

“I know that,” Umi said without flinching. “But what if you get caught? And I don’t mean just by the police,” she added intently.

Letting out a soft snort through her nose, Nozomi let a faint smile tug at the corners of her mouth as she made her way to the front door. “Do you really think that’s going to happen, Umi-chan? Trust me, even if the _police_ are as half-competent as they’d like to think they are, they have a long way to go before they’ll be able to catch up with _me._ Rin,” she tacked on, calling over her shoulder as an afterthought, “you’ll keep an eye out on the police channels for me, won’t you?”

Rin grinned back at her, snapping into a mock salute. “Yes, ma’am!”  

* * *

Eli slid her identification badge across the surface of the service counter. “I’m here to ask about a patient you saw this morning,” she told the receptionist sitting across from her. Other than herself, the small clinic was deserted.

The receptionist picked up the badge to examine it, blinking rapidly a few times. “O-Okay,” she said nervously, “let me just get—”

“Is there a problem here?”

A third, female voice and sharp click of heels on floor tile interrupted them. Eli looked up to see a doctor dressed in a white lab coat approaching them, arms over her chest. The doctor—an older woman in her fifties—stopped abruptly when she noticed the badge in the receptionist’s hand.

“No,” Eli told her. “My name is Senior Investigator Ayase Eli, and I’m here to ask you about a patient you saw this morning,” she repeated.

The doctor took a quick, nervous look at the badge before casting a furtive glance at the windows and door behind her. Something about the quirky, restless way she moved and the fidgety jerk of her hands made Eli sure that she knew why she was there and wanted her gone as soon as possible.

The woman held her gaze for a full few heartbeats before she relented at last. “Alright,” she acquiesced, “but this better be quick.”

She beckoned Eli to one of her examination rooms and shut the door behind them as soon as they had both fully crossed the threshold. The action made her slightly nervous; Eli was reassured by the weight of her gun underneath her jacket.

“Who did you treat this morning?” she repeated the question.

The physician wrung her hands again. “A young woman… probably about your age. A gunshot wound on her shoulder that needed immediate medical assistance. I asked her if she wanted it to be reported to the authorities more than once, but she refused. She insisted it was an accident and that there was no need to involve the police.”

Eli furrowed her brows. “Did she say anything else?”

The physician shook her head once empathetically. “No. She was… very dismissive, I guess you could say? She didn’t want me doing more than what was absolutely necessary for her and she was very quick to leave afterwards. She asked my receptionist if she could use the phone to make a call before she left, but that was it.”

She looked up sharply underneath blonde bangs. “A phone call?”

The doctor nodded again. “But that’s all I’m aware of. Was there anything else you needed? None of this is going to affect my practice, is it?”

“No,” Eli replied. “In that case, I just want to take a look at your outgoing phone log, but that will be all.”

“Alright,” the physician agreed. “You’ll have to speak with my receptionist about that though.”

Quickly thanking the doctor for her time, Eli made her way to the front desk again. “Would it be possible for you to print me a copy of the phone calls that went out this morning from your office phone?” she asked the receptionist.

“I can do that. One minute,” the young woman told her in a slightly apprehensive voice as she turned to open up the file on her computer.

Eli waited with her arms crossed over her chest until the printer behind the secretary beeped. “Here you are,” the young woman told her, handing her a few sheets of paper stapled together.

“Thank you,” Eli said, taking the papers from her and skimming through the list of numbers quickly. Nearly all of the outgoing calls were registered to other clinics, hospitals, or medical laboratories, but one number in particular caught her eye: a taxi company, logged at 0823.

“Was this phone call made this morning by a patient?” she asked, pointing it out.

“Yes,” the receptionist answered. “She wanted me to help her phone a taxi company, and then went outside to wait for them. She didn’t come back afterwards, so I’m pretty sure they came to pick her up.”

“Okay. Thank you,” she said again before turning around to leave.

Once she was outside, Eli pulled out her phone to dial the number of the taxi company that she had just gotten from the clinic. When a customer service agent picked up on the other end, she quickly gave him her identification and asked to be connected to his superior.

She waited a surprisingly short amount of time before the voice of an older man greeted her.  “My name is Senior Investigator Ayase Eli,” she repeated for what felt like the fourth time that morning. “I’m looking for the record of a call your company received this morning, if that’s possible.”

“Sure,” the man over the phone told her. “I’ll just need your credentials and the details of the call you’re looking for.”

After she gave him her badge number, Eli tapped her foot on the pavement of the sidewalk impatiently as she waited for him to look up the call number. The minutes crawled by, aggravatingly slow as she watched the shadows cast by the overhead sun creep forward inch by inch.

Finally, the crackle of static told her that the man had returned. “Sorry about the wait, ma’am,” he told her. “It looks like the client was dropped off at Shinagawa Warehouse, building number 141-8510.” Something about the address sounded rang a bell at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t remember what it was off of the top of her head. “Was there anything else you needed help with?”

“No, that’ll be all, thank you,” Eli replied, closing the call after the man hung up.

It was only when the address brought up a map of the harbourside did she recall what had been bothering her. _Shinagawa._ She repeated the name to herself in her head a few times. _Wasn’t that the company that declared bankruptcy a few years back? Why would you need a ride to a closed warehouse… unless there was something you wanted to hide?_

* * *

Nozomi flipped up the display to her omnitool the moment she stepped out into the mostly-abandoned streets by Tokyo’s harbourside. Once upon a time, they had been a bustle of activity, but Tokyo didn’t see many imports these days. Most of the affluent businessmen had moved on into investing into weapons manufacturing and pharmaceuticals, and the ones that remained were quick to follow.

The result was a near-ghost town of old warehouses dating back a decade or two that no one wanted to spend the money to clean up— _a perfect place to hide things you don’t want other people finding out about, in other words_ , she thought to herself as she walked, her heels clicking on the pavement.

Overhead, a lone seagull cawed once over the sound of waves crashing against the concrete dykes that had been built into the harbour.

“Anything new on the police?” she asked Rin, who had picked up her call.

“Nope,” the orange-haired woman replied with a shrug. “They’ve been kinda quiet this afternoon. The last thing I got was that they’re doing some reassignments… _again._ Nya’d think with all these reassignments they’d have caught someone by now, but that never seems to happen.” Rin opened her mouth to say something else, but she was pushed to the side by Umi, who had squeezed her way into the display.

“More importantly, are you sure you should be calling us right now?” the blue-haired woman demanded, ignoring Rin’s squeal of protest.

“Umi-chan, please,” Nozomi replied with a smirk. “You’re too paranoid for your own good. How is Kotori ever going to put up with living with you for the rest of her life if you’re too scared to put on a dress because someone _might_ be spying on you?”

Even through the holographic screen, she could see that Umi was turning a deep shade of red.

Rin let out a cackle of laughter before she pushed the other woman out of the way. “By the way, I think they reassigned the investigator who was supposed to be looking for you to this case,” the orange-haired young woman told her brightly.

“ _Really,_ ” Nozomi said, half to herself.

Rin nodded enthusiastically. “They must be _really_ desperate if they’ve given up on looking for you.”

Nozomi rested the back of her free hand to her chin in thought. “What do you think the chances are of them working with us?”

“ _Don’t you dare_.” Umi’s voice issued out of her omnitool, loud enough to startle a pigeon roosting on one of the k-rails into flight. The blue-haired woman squeezed in next to Rin again, her face still red, but for completely different reasons as she fixed an amber glare on her. “Are you _insane_?”

“Nope,” Nozomi replied casually, pushing a stray strand of hair out of her face. “On the contrary, I’m dead serious. Think about it, Umi. If they’ve given up looking for me, don’t you think it’s time that we got our hands on some of the information we can’t access?”

“ _No_ ,” Umi said empathetically. “Nozomi, there is a one-in-a-million probability that there is a _chance they_ are willing to work with _us,_ and unless that happens, you are just going to get us all arrested.”

Nozomi looked up, spotting the warehouse in the message that Rin had intercepted a few hours earlier, the corners of her mouth twitching into a smile as she took in the sight before her. “You know, Umi, as skeptical as you are, I _think_ I’ve just found the opportunity we’re looking for,” she remarked blithely before she closed the call on Umi’s outraged splutter.

* * *

Eli stood at the front door of the warehouse, staring down the electronic lock that had obviously been installed long after its previous inhabitants had last closed its doors. It had taken her all afternoon to get to the warehouse in question, and her level of suspicion had only increased when she saw that a fence had been constructed around several of the old warehouses in the district.

A closer inspection of the metal links told her that the construction was recent—an even stranger fact considering that this was one of the only parts of Tokyo that was devoid of citizens.

A break in the chain-link fence had provided her access to the warehouse, only for her to find that each and every one of its entrances had been locked. _Now what?_ she thought furiously to herself as she paced in front of the door. There was no way in unless she was miraculously strong enough to break down the door, and while she had already called for backup, she had no idea how long it would be until they arrived.

Never one to sit around while she was waiting, Eli looked up at her surroundings again. She noted that the windows on the fourth floor of the warehouse seemed to be broken; while it was probably possible for her to fit through one of them, she had no idea how to get up there.

The red light of the electronic lock glowered at her in the sunset as she turned her attention back to it. A few experimental taps on its numbered pad had already told her that she wasn’t getting past it without the right combination—not to mention that the combination in question could have as many digits as the lock was programmed to accept.

 _Damn it_. She bit down on her lip to stop herself from cursing out loud.

She was so focused on the lock in question that she didn’t hear the footsteps approaching until a shadow fell over her own.

“Well, it looks like you're having a little bit of trouble with that lock over there." The speaker was female, and almost inappropriately pleasant—as though they were discussing the weather. "Would you like some help?”

Something about the voice was vaguely familiar as she spun around, realizing too late that her gun was still in the inside pocket of her jacket.

Eli found herself looking into the emerald gaze of the woman she had run into the night before, her long hair tied back into a ponytail and wearing the same mischievous smile on her face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unfortunately, I have a final exam next week that I really need to pass, so my goal is to get as much of Chapter 7 finished this week as possible before I inevitably have to return to my textbooks for my upcoming exam. :c
> 
> Hopefully it won't take me too long to complete Chapter 7, as I'm really looking forward to continuing the plot from here on out!


	7. Drawing the Line in 'Borderline'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOLY CRAP I AM SO SORRY THIS TOOK ME SO LONG, AHHHHH!
> 
> I've had a month from hell (a lot of personal things, along with school) which unfortunately was the cause for me to alternate between not having time to write at times, and at others, not really having the inspiration to.
> 
> However, Jolno's new album came in for me last Friday at just the right time. Her voice was the inspiration I needed, and I scurried to wrap up the last 3/4ths of this chapter since then. (If anyone wants to talk _Santorowa_ tracks, I'm down, btw) I also _hate_ the idea of abandoning a story I already started, and I definitely want to see this fic through to the end.
> 
> Unfortunately, I have some exams and a paper to wrap up in the coming few weeks that I really should sort out first, but hopefully my schedule will settle by the middle of August so I can finally have some time to myself (that I plan on continuing to write with) then. Thanks so much if you've stuck with me until now; your support for this fic is greatly appreciated and I can't thank you guys enough. ;___;
> 
> I really hope you guys enjoy this chapter!

“Well?” the woman standing opposite her prompted when Eli continued to stare at her, rendered utterly speechless. “Unless you’re trying to tell me you have a different reason for wasting fifteen minutes of your precious time standing out here.”

The semblance of a sentence finally made it to her lips. “You’re—”

The violet-haired woman grinned at her, the expression playing at the corner of her lips. “The person you almost crashed into yesterday? I sure am. Are there any other insightful observations that you’d like to make while we’re standing out here when there’s a person of interest inside?”

“I—” Eli stuttered, “how do you know about that?”

The words sounded stupid, even inside her head— _get a grip on yourself, Ayase, you’re supposed to be a trained professional—_ but how, _how_ was this woman standing there discussing classified information with her in a tone as though they were discussing the weather that day?

The other woman continued to observe her with a look that she could’ve been using to placate a small child, folding her arms over her chest. As she did so, Eli noticed a strange device that resembled a watch on her left wrist glinting in the light of the setting sun.

“Oh, I’m sure you have plenty of questions, but are you sure now is the right time to ask them?” the violet-haired woman replied, delicately pushing a strand of dark hair off of her forehead and out of her eyes. “After all, I think your,” she gave a tiny, deliberate cough, “sorry, _our_ main objective here is to get through that door, isn’t it? How about this?” she proposed patronizingly after a pause, “if you work with me for now, I’ll answer any questions that you have after we find the person we’re both interested in.”

Without waiting for a response, the other woman strode forward and tapped on the electronic look with a gloved hand. Eli stared after her, unable to formulate something coherent to say and too stunned to move. She could only gape as the violet-haired woman examined the lock for a few more seconds before she did something with the device on her wrist. She didn’t know—couldn’t be sure of—what she was watching, but what she knew she _did_ see for absolute certain was that a few seconds later, the indicator on the lock winked green and the heavy metal door swung open ever so slightly before them.

The other woman glanced over her shoulder, offering Eli another one of her smiles as she took in what Eli was sure was an expression of disbelief plastered on her face as she pushed the door open wider. “Coming?” she asked with a slight raise of one eyebrow.

Still too taken aback to speak, Eli obediently followed her into the building, still functioning on what felt like autopilot. Suspicion and perhaps a thousand different questions were brewing at the back of her somehow-still-functioning, rational mind, but the logical part of her hadn’t quite regained control over her incredulousness just yet.

The inside of the warehouse was dusty and dimly lit. Light from the setting sun filtered through a hole on the roof—the result of a decade or so of disuse. There was the sound of scurrying from something unseen, but the sounds were too quiet and discreet to be human. The walls were lined with flimsy metal crates and large barrels, a fine layer of dust scattered over the undisturbed surfaces. Just in front of them was a ramp that led upwards onto the main floor of the warehouse and not much else.

The violet-haired woman was a few feet in front of her, her footsteps light and almost silent despite the fact that she was wearing heels. Inhaling through her nose, Eli held up a hand to shield her eyes once they had cleared the ramp: the broken windows from the upper floors somewhere above them let in the glare of the setting sun.

She looked around—stacks of old, fragile crates lined the walls here too, also covered in a thick coating of dust and debris that had been collecting for the past several years. Apart from a few abandoned forklifts parked along one wall of the building, it was almost eerily empty.

Something touched her arm, and Eli jumped. She spun around, about to open her mouth before she remembered where they were, and angrily clamped her mouth shut.

The other woman wasn’t looking at her, however. Instead, she was staring across the warehouse. Eli followed her gaze—in the dusty, hazy light, she could make out the red glow of a locked door that presumably led upstairs.

She did not need to be told what that meant.

The thick layer of dust muffled their footsteps as the two of them warily made their way across the floor of the abandoned building. Eli felt her hand creeping into her jacket where she kept her gun, just in case.

But by the time she had caught up with the violet-haired woman, the door that opened to yet another ramp leading up was already open—Eli hadn’t even seen her fiddle with the lock.

She squashed the urge to say something: the gut-chilling suspicion of the woman’s identity that had been brewing at the back of mind for a while had solidified into something tangible that set her already-aggravated nerves on edge, but she resisted the temptation to say it out loud just yet.

The woman in front of her, however, seemed oblivious—or carefully ignorant—of her tense, apprehensive stance, and as Eli stared at the back of her head, she realized that she could not read her body language well at all.

This bothered her more than she would’ve liked to admit had she been asked to say it out loud: she considered her ability to read other people and their body language part of why she was so successful at her job.

But the woman in front of her now was either cheerfully unconcerned with her surroundings—a fact Eli highly doubted—or she was just as good at disguising her body language as Eli was at reading it. The first would have made her an idiot, and the second, concerning in a way that grated against her ingrained instincts.

Emerging onto the landing of the second floor, the violet-haired woman glanced both ways for the fraction of a heartbeat before she darted out to the right, her steps trained and silent.

As if she needed further confirmation for the suspicion already brewing in the back of her mind, Eli caught up with her just outside the only door on the hallway that overlooked the first floor of the warehouse below them in time to see her enter the last few digits of what had to be either a bypass or a hack into the doorframe.

Before Eli could gesture at her to stop, she palmed the door control, causing it to open.

The room beyond the unlocked door was small. Yellow, aged papers were scattered over the floor, clearly having spilled from the shelving unit standing in the corner of the room. A large desk bolted to the floor occupied the majority of the remaining space, the glare of the setting sun peeking through the broken windows that lined the wall opposite reflecting off the smooth surface.

A lone figure was sitting on the corner of the desk; the unknown woman glanced up sharply as the door swung open. “You’re not—”

She scrambled for the pistol lying a foot or so beside her on the desk, but not quickly enough—Eli had her own gun out before the woman could even pull the safety back on hers.

Stepping through the doorframe, Eli held the pistol steady in her right hand as she approached the unknown woman. She didn’t intend to fire—especially on an unknown situation in which the woman might not be the only hostile present—but staring down the barrel of a gun tended to be a rather sobering experience for most people. A dark stain on the sleeve of the woman’s jacket caught her attention from the corner of her eye. “Are you working with the people who broke into City Hall last night?”

The woman did not reply, but glared back at her as though she was issuing a challenge.

Eli took another step closer to her. Behind her, she heard a second pair of light, delicate footsteps enter the room. Deciding to ignore it for now, she waited for a response, not in any hurry to extort an answer. “Well?”

The woman opened and closed her mouth a few times before she pressed her lips together. Eli could see her gritting her teeth from the way her jaw was set. “I don’t have anything to say to you,” she finally ground out, though the words held a little less force than Eli would’ve anticipated.

Eli let her gaze linger over the dark, rust-coloured stain on the woman’s shoulder for a brief second before she held her wavering gaze. “You should know from the fact that I’ve already found you here that I know what you have,” she said evenly. “You can choose to cooperate with me, or you can choose not to.” She paused. “Is that data you were handed last night worth risking the rest of your livelihood for?”

Silence fell in the small room just as the glare of the setting sun caught on one of the panes of the broken window.

The woman sitting on the desk slowly slipped her uninjured hand into one of the pockets of her jacket. “No,” she admitted finally. “I guess not.” Through the outline of the thin fabric, Eli watched her close her hand around something.

“Who handed you the data?” Eli repeated.

The woman’s gaze flitted over to the window for a brief heartbeat. “My brother,” she answered after a brief pause. “He didn’t tell me where he was going last night. When he called me, all he told me was to meet him at the intersection.” A slight note of bitterness entered her tone. “I… didn’t know the police were already after him, and he shoved this into my hand before he ran. He told me that they would be in contact with me so I could hand it off to them instead.”

Eli watched her as she spoke, furrowing her brows slightly. The nervous, fidgety way in which she spoke suggested that she was telling the truth… or at least, the truth as she knew it. “And… who is _they_?”

The woman opened her mouth, hesitating. “I… don’t really know. That isn’t how this all works. All I know is that the man who contacted me goes by ‘Fisherman’. He’s the one who told me to wait here for him.”

_Fisherman. Who—_

She did not get to finish that thought before the sound of a single shot echoed across empty space and barren walls.

The woman in front of her crumpled, her form sinking to the floor in a limp huddle. Eli didn’t need to rush towards her to check her vitals to know that she wouldn’t find any.

Briefly, fear flared, but then before her heart could send it pouring out into her frozen muscles, a combination of training and instinct sent it scurrying away into a corner of her mind as she assessed the situation in front of her.

“They’re not going to shoot anyone else,” came a voice from somewhere behind her. “They got what they came for.”

Eli whipped around, her gun still in her hand as she spun to face the violet-haired woman. The expression in her green eyes had changed into something far more sinister and understanding, a far cry from the mischievousness in them earlier. “What do you mean?” For a moment. her surprise quashed the rest of her suspicions about the woman in question to the back of her priority list.

The other woman gestured at the body behind them. “They knew you were after her this entire time. The moment you started pursuing her, she was expendable to them. Didn’t you hear her? She didn’t know who she was supposed to be meeting here.”

Unconsciously, her fingers tightened around the barrel of her gun. “What are you talking about?” Eli asked her slowly, enunciating each word one by one.

The violet-haired woman faced her, wholly unafraid of the firearm in her hand. “I’m willing to bet that this was a test for them, you know, to see what they could get away with before trying something in earnest next time.” She took in Eli’s expression, contemplating it for a moment or two. “Although, judging by your expression, that’s not something you know about either. Well, I guess it can’t be helped if the opportunity I saw doesn’t quite line up with my expectations. I can’t get lucky every time, I suppose.”

With that, she flicked her long, dark ponytail over her shoulder and turned to go.

 _What? Who does she think she is?_ The thought crossed Eli’s mind like a bolt of lightning, squashing her shocked speechlessness into nothing just as she found her voice, moments before the other woman disappeared into the darkness. “I know who you are.”

The violet-haired woman stopped, one hand still in the air, and half-turned so that she was looking at Eli. “Oh really?” Her tone was nonchalant and wholly unconcerned as the corners of her lips twitched into a smile. “And who might I be, _Investigator?_ ” she asked, placing emphasis on the title.

Eli held her ground. “You’re the person who’s been stealing from all of those businessmen and leaving the tarot cards behind for me to find, aren’t you?”

The smile on the woman’s face widened very slightly. “And how did you come to that particular conclusion?”

“Are you trying to tell me that a normal civilian would have shown up here at this time and also happened to have the necessary skills to break into three different locks along the way?” she challenged, fighting to keep her voice calm despite the way her heart was pounding beneath her sternum. There were far, far too many unknowns and variables in front of her— _that_ much she knew and could discern even if she didn’t—and the woman in front of her was only exacerbating the least of her problems.

The other woman laughed softly, the smile on her face genuine now. “Well, at least you have _some_ semblance of the necessary skills to get to the bottom of all of this. Although I have to admit, I didn’t expect the investigator that was assigned to looking for me to be a woman.”

There was something about that particular sentence that tugged at her the wrong way, and it wasn’t the jab thrown at her gender. “So… what’s stopping me from arresting you right now?” Eli asked.

The violet-haired woman grinned mischievously at her. “I wasn’t aware you had any proof.”

“Proof?” she sputtered incredulously. “You just said it yourself.”

“And? It’s my word against yours. In fact, I could even say you had a stressful day and were hallucinating things.”

The words ignited the irritation under Eli’s skin—far more so because she knew the other woman was right. On a legal standing, it _was_ her word against hers, and a gut instinct didn’t exactly stand up as solid evidence in court.

“I could still have you arrested on suspicion for cooperating with these people.”

The other woman laughed out loud this time. “After I broke into this building for you? You know as well as I do that that isn’t how this works. If I was working for them, why would I let you in? Even if it was a trap, why wouldn’t I wait for your entire squad to get here before luring you in? Please, investigator, you’re grasping at straws and ignoring the real issue here.” She pointed at the body of the woman behind them. “You’ve just uncovered something that goes far deeper than you know, or maybe far bigger than your superiors are willing to tell you. You look like someone who’s committed to the right side of the law, at least—do you really think arresting _me_ is going to do anything for the fact that you just saw a woman killed because there was the possibility that she would give away too much information? Is a coincidental civilian who _may_ or may not be someone you’re looking for higher on your list of priorities, or is _that_?”

The end of her speech was greeted with silence, and Eli hated herself because she knew the other woman was right, echoing the executor’s sentiments from sometime earlier that morning.

“How do you know all this?” she finally asked in a quiet voice, once she had wrestled her conflicted thoughts and emotions under some veneer of control.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that,” the violet-haired woman replied delicately, fiddling with the end of her ponytail with one hand. “Unless you’re going to commit to working together with me.”

The words slipped out before Eli could even fully process what she had just been asked. “ _What?_ Do you really think I would— _Why_ should I work with someone like you? In fact, why should I even believe you?”

“And do _you_ think you’re going to get to the bottom of all this otherwise? I’m sure you’re smart enough to realize by now that something far bigger than you could possibly imagine going on in the corners of this city, investigator. More people are going to die—I can tell you that for a fact. You may not like what I do, but unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that you’re going to have to do some unpleasant things in order to get the information you need to solve this case, none of which you will _ever_ receive just by working for the police alone. I’m sure you’re _very_ committed to the law—but tell me, is proving that it was little old me exposing the people who didn’t deserve to be where they were more important… or do you think that what you just saw could be proof that I’m telling you the truth? _You_ may not like me on principle, but you were observant enough to put together what kind of person I was and how I did what I did. I need someone like that if we’re going to uncover what’s _really_ going on here. That’s my offer to you. You’re welcome to take it, or leave it.”

Silence settled over them again, thick and unforgiving as heavy morning fog, as they stared at each other, neither of their suspicion or hostility quite yet spent. Eli wasn’t sure why she was even hesitating—surely, the correct choice given her current situation was to arrest the woman in front of her. So why, _why_ was she hesitating?

_Because somehow, she’s speaking the truth. Just as sure as I am that she is the woman behind all those thefts, there’s something about what she said that is somehow the irrevocable truth._

Behind them, the sound of sirens permeated the dusk falling outside.

“And I believe _that_ is my cue to leave,” the violet-haired woman quipped. “Why don’t you think about it?” She flashed Eli another quirk of a smile as she headed over to the broken window, hoisting herself onto the window ledge before giving her a wave. “I think you know where to find me if you do.”

And with that, she hopped over the ledge and disappeared into the darkness just as Eli’s cellphone rang.

* * *

“Ayase.”

The voice of her superior jolted her out of her thoughts as Eli looked up from the mess of case files on her desk, wincing a little at the sudden motion that was far too fast for the greasy pressure of the headache building at the back of her hear.

Okuda stood in front of her, his expression shifting far too much for her to tell what he wanted to say to her. All she knew for sure was that it likely wasn’t anything good, given the fact that he had come to her office to say it.

“I just received a call,” he informed her. “A physician named Osoreda Yui was found dead in her home this morning.”

Eli stared at him, unable to control the icy chill that seized the back of her throat, closing in on her rapidly rising heartrate. The name was all too familiar to her—she had spent the majority of the last ninety-six hours looking through her case files, a quarter of which had involved the physician in question.

“But that’s—”

Okuda cut her off before she could continue. “Her receptionist, who worked at the clinic she owned, was also found dead this morning at an intersection near her home.”

The ice that had begun to form somewhere at the base of her throat was rapidly spreading through her veins as she half-sat, half-stood there, chilling her down to her extremities. “But… how?” she asked out loud, though who she was directing that question at, Eli didn’t know. “We never released the name of the clinic that that woman was treated to the public,” she said listlessly. “How could they have known?”

The executor gave her a long, expectant look. “I don’t know. But I expect you to find out. The homicide squad is securing both scenes right now and moving the bodies to the morgue so Nishikino can perform the autopsy.” He checked his watch. “Go home and get some sleep so you can give me a report on those sites tomorrow morning.”

He didn’t wait for a reply before letting himself out of her office.

Eli stared at the doorframe long after he had left, the icy sensation that lingered in her hands and legs preventing any form of movement.

 _We never released the name of the clinic or the physician that treated that woman to the public,_ she repeated to herself, as though trying to reassure herself it was true. _So how?_

 _“None of this is going to affect my practice, is it?_ ” She shut the door on the memory of the jumpy, anxious doctor that had greeted her at the clinic.

_Damn it._

An echo of a voice came to the forefront of her mind, pushing past thoughts she had yet to completely sort out and process in the past few days.

_“I’m sure you’re smart enough to realize by now that something far bigger than you could possibly imagine going on in the corners of this city, investigator. You may not like what I do, but unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that you’re going to have to do some unpleasant things in order to get the information you need to solve this case, none of which you will ever receive just by working for the police alone.”_

_Is this it?_ Eli wondered to herself. _The ‘something bigger’ that she was talking about? What else could this be?_ Who _else would possibly have an interest in eliminating the civilians that that woman came into contact with?_

A painful sort of discomfort was making its way upward from her chest, temporarily obscuring all thoughts of everything else. _Damn it. How could I have let this happen?_ The thoughts were bitter, angry, and frustrated—she was supposed to be better than that.

 _How much better?_ The voice at the back of her head awoke in the tones of the violet-haired woman she’d met a few days prior. _Better enough that you’re going to refuse information so you can claim to be a good person who works for the right side of the law?_

“Damn it,” she growled out loud—she had to be crazy for even _entertaining_ the thought of working with a criminal. _I could lose my job for this._

But if she didn’t, who knew how many more people were waiting to die? Wasn’t that what she’d been told? She hadn’t wanted to believe the violet-haired woman when she’d said that there was something bigger that she was wholly unaware of—as loath as she was to admit it, Eli knew that some fraction of those words had to be true. There was no other explanation, even if her gut instinct was wrong. Even if she was, was she prepared to risk the _possibility_ of what the other woman had described happening on something she _could_ prevent?

_What is more worth it to me? My personal integrity, or…_

The answer was there, even if she didn’t want to admit it, even if she would rather almost do anything than to admit it out loud. She hated herself for the conclusion, but what choice did she have?

She knew what the inevitable conclusion was, no matter how much it grated on her personal morals or even the morals that had been imposed on her by her career. _But… I can’t let people who have nothing to do with all of this continue to be the victims. That’s what happened before, ten years ago. I made this choice so that I wouldn’t have to see it happen again. And if what that woman said was true, then unless_ someone _can get to the bottom of this, it will._

_It already has._

Heaviness settled in her chest like an unwanted weight, its resolve replacing the caustic anger from earlier and tangible even though she had no means to force it under lock and key. _I have to. I don’t see another option._

Striding over to the door of her office, Eli opened it, taking a breath before she allowed herself out, her hand lingering on the doorknob before she steeled the resolve she’d already made.

She turned off her phone once she’d left the precinct building—there was no need for anyone except herself to know where she was going tonight.

For a late Friday evening, Tokyo was busier than she expected it to be, and Eli had to dodge around several already-drunk businessmen on her way to her destination. Her footsteps were unusually slow, even considering the amount of people out on the streets that evening. She knew why it was, but she refused to acknowledge it, even in her head.

Even if she had another option, who knew what was at stake while she tried to figure things out on her own? _I could have, if this didn’t happen._ The solitary thought didn’t help her mood, nor did it eliminate the desecrating indecision that was still lurking at the back of her mind. _If only I had more time…_

She shoved that sentiment to the back of her consciousness, knowing how ridiculous it sounded.

Pausing at a red light at an intersection, Eli spotted the café where she had run into the violet-haired woman only a few days previously.

_“I think you know where to find me.”_

It was the only location that made sense.

The lights were dimmed already inside the small business, a sign that its owner was about to close up shop. When she opened the door, there was no one standing behind the counter.

Instead, Eli found herself almost immediately meeting a familiar emerald gaze from the very back of the small café, as though its owner had been anticipating her arrival. The owner in question broke into a mischievous smile the moment she stepped over the threshold. Eli couldn't help but notice that her hair was pulled back into twintails today, giving her a far more innocuous look than the one that she had exuded a few days ago, especially when paired with the abandoned dessert next to her solitary seat.

“Are you here to take me up on my offer, _investigator_?” she asked, the expression twitching at the corner of her lips. “You must have heard the news just now.”

There was no need for her to be discreet whatsoever—there was no one else in the coffee shop.

Eli stood where she was, her fingernails digging into the surface of her palm. “A few days ago,” she said, keeping her voice tightly under control, “were you telling me the truth?”

The smile on the other woman’s lips grew ever so slightly, as though she was amused. “And what would I gain from lying to you?”

The nonchalant, carefree tone of her voice grated against her already stretched-thin nerves and only served to increase the dull headache pounding at the back of her head by a few notches, but Eli reigned in her temper, knowing it was the least likely route to the information she wanted—needed. “If— _if_ —I agree to this, are you going to tell me everything you know?”

The violet-haired woman stood too, taking a few steps towards her. “You have my word.”

_I don’t know how much the word of a thief means, but I suppose it’ll have to do._

“Fine,” she acquiesced at last.

“It’s Nozomi,” the other woman supplied as soon as the word left her lips. “Toujou Nozomi.”

Caught off guard, Eli stumbled on the sentence she wanted to say. “W-What?”

“My name,” the woman standing across from her replied with a smile, “You could at least be courteous enough to tell me yours. Not that I wouldn’t be able to find out, of course, but it _would_ make things easier if we’re going to work together.”

For a moment—not her first, and as she would come to find out, definitely not her last—Eli was speechless as she stared at the violet-haired woman only a few feet away from her. It took her a few heartbeats to gather herself and her thoughts as the other woman stuck out her hand over the surface of the table between them.

Hesitantly, she took it. “Ayase,” she finally said. “Ayase Eli."


End file.
